Yeah, it’s really horrible when I have to show my age passport to get served a beer, too.
Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on voting is the same as the party that wants people to get vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.
You kid, but that's a violation of your privacy as well and shouldn't exist.
That change in the US at least was also very contentious when it occurred, and subsequently every time the legal age was changed.
But say we decide that that is OK, which it appears most people have, they're still not really comparable because one is based on the assumption that you're too young to get inebriated responsibly, whereas this is proof you've had a medical procedure performed on your body. I'm sure you can see the glaring difference, one is significantly more extreme and invasive than the other.
Polio is actually a very good analogy. Only in about 0.5% of cases does it affect the nervous system. Only in at most 30% of that 0.5% is it fatal. In 70% of infections it is asymptomatic. COVID is actually very much like polio.
And the vaccines aren’t deadly - this is just misinformation.
Editorialized and misleading title. More anti-vax propaganda. They’re really hiding it what with the article being posted on nih.gov and all. HN should be better than this.
Let me summarize the study: “We deleted a protein from a different virus and made it less dangerous, thus showing that the protein is important.”
It depends on your application. If you are running on a smartphone, or on an AR headset, or on a car, or on a camera, etc, you generally do not have the latency budget to wait for multiple frames and run at high batch size.
For those who are not aware by name alone, the author, Catherine MacKinnon, is a very dedicated anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminist. She was a major player in the 1980s when mainstream feminism split between sex-positive and anti-sex-work camps. Whether or not you agree with her position here I think it valuable to remember that it is one she has consistently held for decades, and part of a broader stance that sex work harms women. This is not a random essayist but an activist for a particular set of broader societal changes who is writing this piece.
> This is not a random essayist but an activist for a particular set of broader societal changes who is writing this piece.
What’s your message here? Are you saying a random essay would be more credible or less credible?
I’m not super informed on this topic, but admittedly, I would give more credibility to someone who’s consistent on their message and not willing to sway with the wind for personal gain- regardless of whether I agree or disagree with them.
I can’t read the article but the headline is making claims about the safety of sex workers on OnlyFans. Someone with an ideological axe to grind has an incentive to distort or selectively highlight the facts around such claims. It’s worth noting they are trying to persuade you to their viewpoint and not attempting to offer an objective account.
It means both that she’s biased, and also that she’s incredibly hostile to sex workers, which makes her one of the least qualified people to talk about what is safe for sex work or good for sex workers.
"Biased" can't become code for has a well-known point-of-view that disagrees with mine.
I don't agree with Catherine McKinnon on anything, but I don't think she should be disqualified from speaking because she believes what she is saying. Her arguments should be discussed on their merits.
There is a reason I wrote my post in as carefully a neutral manner as I did. My message is that the author has a significant body of other work supporting her position and has spent considerable time developing and advocating for it, and that this is not really about OnlyFans alone but part of a broader social movement the author is a notable part of. I am deliberately not taking a stance on that movement as part of my comments here, because I think it’s a complicated topic deserving of serious discussion, and that that discussion has been ongoing for forty years as part of mainstream feminist debate.
Perversely, it seems that writing in an intentionally neutral way has caused me to get downvoted to zero, while the top comment calls the author a crank.
The author of the piece has an agenda, selectively using anecdotal evidence to gain attention. Think the headline “Florida doctor dies after receiving Pfizer vaccine” that was published not long ago. Nobody reads the follow up piece where it’s ruled unrelated.
Hot take: why do we still care? Linus says something negative about something, big shocker.
This is just the tech crowd equivalent of a tabloid at the supermarket checkout isle, Tom Cruise is secretly a ferret-lover, read all about Bob’s torrid affair with Mallory!
I think it's another proof that he has improved. Sure he uses strong language against the problem, but he's clear with what's wrong and why, and how to improve it.
My concern is that tomorrow, I'll have to deal with one of the junior devs bringing up Linus Torvalds' comment as the starting point for a suggestion we leave GitHub, which ends up being a lot of work for no material gain for my org.
Torvalds isn't wrong, and I'm almost certain he didn't mean, "...and therefore everyone should quit GitHub immediately." but people will interpret it that way. And on the off chance he did mean for everyone to quit GitHub, he's then ignoring a cornucopia of value that GitHub provides unrelated to his expertise as the creator of git, which I don't think he's arrogant enough to do, anymore.
>My concern is that tomorrow, I'll have to deal with one of the junior devs bringing up Linus Torvalds' comment as the starting point for a suggestion we leave GitHub
What would you rather see? That he just avoid expressing any opinion that might make people question your status-quo? Muddy his own message by weighing down his emails with hedging and qualifying statements that are - at best - superfluous to his target audience?
I'd love it if one of my juniors was tuned in enough to read this and realize there is more to git than github. And maybe they even start learning how to use that tool beyond the lowest common denominator of git knowledge that most people skate by with.
Of course it might mean steering them away from a rash decisions like misinterpreting this email, or wanting to leave github just because someone pointed out it wasn't perfect. But that's what makes them junior. It's my job to make them better than that.
>which ends up being a lot of work for no material gain for my org.
If you would just paternalistically tell them no, or would give a mentoring answer but don't see the value in that, then there is a workplace problem to address. Either you're hiring too junior for what you're willing to support on the team, or you need to reconsider your role within the team.
Then you point at the line before his statement that says “GitHub does a lot of things well…”, and say that you use the tool that best fits your development process, which is GitHub. The kernel uses a different development process which requires all of the information about a change to come from the commit message, making GitHub’s merge messages which rely on having access to other tools besides Git useless.
It blows my mind how one of the most influential software engineers, creator of linux and git, is reduced to "just a famous person like Tom Cruise who constantly negative" as if he's actually enjoying it or worse, that we shouldn't take what he has to share into consideration because he's used to express his viewpoint.
Maybe Torvalds is just as positive as he is negative and the whole reason why you think that he's someone who's "unsurprisingly negative" is because that's the content that everyone is passing around. If this was just another of his normal comments you wouldn't even see it posted.
Because he has the street cred to not be diplomatic or political about an opinion. Agree with him or not, he conveys an idea about tech that draws from an incredible intuition and experience, each building on the next and showing an evolution of his thought. He doesn't worry about being "cancelled" and obscure down things with defensive caveats, or being shunned for liking some unpopular concept.
If the news were that Linus was ferret-lover, no one would care. But Linus knows a thing or two about managing the Git workflow of a pretty large project, and he created Git, so I'd give him some (a lot of) credit.
Architects shape often by saying no and the architecture of Linux and it‘s ecosystem is paramount to the tech industry. So we listen to when Linus loudly says no…
That's the biggest thing to learn from bullies like Linus - he hates everything and thinks everyone's an idiot, so where does he go when he actually needs to express something strongly? He can't go anywhere. It's not an effective way to communicate.
> That's the biggest thing to learn from bullies like Linus - he hates everything and thinks everyone's an idiot, so where does he go when he actually needs to express something strongly?
When he has a list of complaints, that is his strong reaction. And why would he need to go stronger?
If he uses his strongest reaction for normal work-day issues like drivers and interface design, where does he go for any potential existential community issues we face in the future?
If something comes up that threatens the future of Linux, and he swears and threatens as usual while trying to warn people about it, nobody will care because 'ah yeah that's just normal Linus'.
> But you're also arguing that he needs to be able to get scarier
No I'm not. The opposite.
If the only tool you know how to use is abuse, then when you need more all you can do is abuse more and more, to the point where you are literally encouraging people to kill themselves.
If you learn other tools you can use them instead when needed and they have an impact.
If I heard Mister Rogers say something was extremely serious I’d stop and listen because he’s a calm and reasonable person. If I heard Linus telling another person to kill themselves I’d think it was him being terrible again but I wouldn’t take notice of what he’s trying to say because he uses that kind of abuse for minor things anyway.
> If the only tool you know how to use is abuse, then when you need more all you can do is abuse more and more
"If", yes.
Is your argument that because he put abuse into emails, that he must not know any of those other tools? I don't think you've justified that argument.
He could use the same tools anyone else could, in those situations.
And you're still saying that he might "need more" in certain situations, and I don't think he does. He doesn't need to instantly catch your attention via acting unusual. Much like Mr. Rogers would do just fine at telling you about something serious if he used his normal voice / normal presenting voice.
I wouldn't dare say we should go back to it but it is how many use to communicate long ago. The mechanism is simple, if you deliver anything yourself you must live up to your own expectations. The louder you moan about everything the more harshly we should examine your stuff. You cant complaint when people ridicule or critique your software if you do it yourself all the time: You've openly invited it!
And yeah, it was more effective. You just have to remember the topic is your code not your person - they are 2 entirely different things. i.e. Brendan Eich is a wizard but javascript started out as a smoking pile of shit.
In The graphing calculator story Ron Avitzur mentioned the other devs saying "It doesn't even suck" which was the highest possible praise.
On the anxiolytic side - a warning for those susceptible to such things, when I was taking melatonin it caused me horrible anxiety, something I’d never experienced before. It stopped not long after I discontinued it.
"mental health conditions" is rather broad along with the intersection between insomnia and depression. you probably just suggested that nobody should take melatonin because you had anxiety.
Suggesting that people with mental health conditions do not self medicate with supplements that can be particularly harmful to those with mental health conditions is entirely reasonable.
Self-medication for quality of life is broadly all you have if you don't want to be put on the hefty big guns immediately. The alternative to the big guns is being told that there's nothing wrong with you. As such, saying "don't self-medicate" is extremely unproductive and only serves to push such practices out of view.
You are vastly exaggerating the risks of attempting to self medicate with something as safe as melatonin while underappreciating the potential benefits.
NY state used to warn against it. It wasn't for nothing.
But yes, I definitely recommend people not to take hormones unless they know exactly what they are doing. Just because something is for sale over the counter, doesn't mean it's safe or good for you.
"Never" is a strong word here. Perhaps cautiously and/or with guidance of a professional? Anecdotally, I have anxiety and OCD, and melatonin has never given me problems.
The thing about excess deaths that I hope we can all appreciate is that it is not a political measure. We can argue about if those deaths were caused by COVID or by the response to it. But we can’t argue about the magnitude of the catastrophe overall. The body bags don’t lie.
Oh, you will find plenty of people that are more than happy to argue about the magnitude of body bags. We are no longer bound by the strictures of objective facts.
What about deaths due to smoking or obesity? Should we ban bacon and cigarettes?
"Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. Worldwide, tobacco use causes more than 7 million deaths per year. If the pattern of smoking all over the globe doesn't change, more than 8 million people a year will die from diseases related to tobacco use by 2030.Mar. 23, 2020"
"Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with at least 2.8 million people dying each year as a result of being overweight or obese. Once associated with high-income countries, obesity is now also prevalent in low- and middle-income countries.Jun. 9, 2021"
We did ban smoking in public spaces because of the same reasoning as with Covid - it's ok to do dumb things that affect yourself, but not if it affects others.
Driving is heavily regulated in terms of what kind of cars are legal and how and where they can be operated. Its just a matter of degrees and cost/benefit as assessed by the public. We don't ban driving outright but be ban all kinds of automotive use.
Was it at least half of the public, though? Just because cars are a less contentious subject doesn't mean that public opinion doesn't ultimately dictate how they are regulated.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the irony of saying that the measures against covid "don't justify the costs" when the article literally says more people have died (either directly from covid or indirectly) during the pandemic than from smoking/obesity/car accidents?
The number of deaths even is lower than it could've been because countries implemented all sorts of draconian measures until vaccinations rolled out, so y'all appear to be simultaneously arguing that there should be more covid deaths cus freedom and/or we should make larger sacrifices to economic activity for lesser causes.
> more people have died (either directly from covid or indirectly) during the pandemic than from smoking/obesity/car accidents
The word "indirectly" is the key there. A lot of the excess deaths were because of the measures against COVID, such as cancer cases that went undiagnosed while they were treatable because people had to cancel their checkups, or methanol poisoning because everyone was suddenly manufacturing their own hand sanitizer, often unsafely.
> A lot of the excess deaths were because of the measures against COVID, such as cancer cases that went undiagnosed while they were treatable because people had to cancel their checkups, or methanol poisoning because everyone was suddenly manufacturing their own hand sanitizer, often unsafely.
Such a claim simply beggars belief. Please cite some figures that back up your assertions.
"A lot" is a modifier you can put in the front of whatever factor supports a given narrative. A lot of people got turned away by overwhelmed hospital staff. A lot of people live in China. A lot of people died in India (which has poorer medical infrastructure than US). A lot of US Republicans died for not following CDC advice. A lot of covid deaths happened in short spiky bursts.
One can weave a quite different narrative from those points (one that supports policies like Australia's or China's, for example)
I find this thread quite amusing. Starting with covid we have examples of other things which cause large amounts of death, with the intention being to normalize these large-scale causes of mortality.
* Smoking: Is being phased out in much of the developed world, with various restrictions, taxes, etc
* Obesity: Widely recognized as a problem, with attempts such as sugar taxes, etc. Solutions are less widely agreed upon, but the fact that is a problem is not in question.
* Driving: Again, road toll is a known issue which we try to reduce. Driving itself should likely be reduced but the bigger motivation is climate related.
> Starting with covid we have examples of other things which cause large amounts of death, with the intention being to normalize these large-scale causes of mortality.
The intent isn't to normalize anything. The intent is to show that COVID is unique among things that cause large amounts of death in that for some reason, people are all too willing to sacrifice all of their freedom and privacy over it.
> * Driving: Again, road toll is a known issue which we try to reduce.
Yes, we try to reduce it. But not by saying "driving is illegal now because it kills people."
Because the modern world depends on the automobile, and from a utilitarian point of view the modern world has still had a positive effect on life expectancy.
Car culture should not be a foregone conclusion, though -- you are right about that. Many European nations -- the Netherlands being the typical example -- have done a pretty good job of fostering a bike culture in their cities. But us Americans sure love our cars, and so it's ultimately a political question, not a moral one.
Well, not that I remotely agree with the ridiculous overreaction to COVID, world-wide, nor do I think any of this is reasonable, but you can’t give somebody smoking or obesity by sneezing on them - you can with Coronavirus. So it’s still apples to oranges.
Isn't it probable that people most at risk are also more likely to spread the virus? They would shed much more virus, wouldn't they? So it's not so simple, someone who has a better functioning immune system represents a lesser risk to others. Is there a counterargument? I do recall some studies acknowledge this, but I don't have a reference.
Yes - the counter argument is that people who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic (think seasonal allergies or “it’s just a cold”) will go about their lives as normal. And this, for many, involves not washing hands after using the restroom, mild coughing and sneezing into their hand and touching things, and spreading germs through close conversations.
There were always people at the office that showed up with a fever, clearly exposing everyone on the bus and at the office, but for a large number of people, this is just one that we would have pushed through.
If you get covid with moderate symptoms, you (hopefully) stay home. People with severe symptoms go to the hospital or die. You don’t need to worry about those people being super spreaders. It’s the people that push through or feel mild symptoms and carry on without thought that are giving it to others, and those in turn may accidentally give it to the most vulnerable in their bubble.
And I hope when you or I get it, that it does feel just like a cold - or is even asymptomatic. But I know that for some percentage of the world it is not, and it will kill them.
This is probably too simple, but:
Transmission = infectiousness x interactions. In your example, People with weak immune systems, who are more infectious, are less likely to have interactions.
Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on voting is the same as the party that wants people to get vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.