I find it frustrating when people claim to be upholding science but then make simple, unscientific claims that suggest they actually have the minds of Greek philosophers.
Some women do have penises. Some men have XX chromosomes. Some women have XY chromosomes. Some people have XX and XY chromosomes. Science tells us that. This has nothing to do with transgender people. But it does suggest "sex" might not be as simple as a metaphysical binary.
According to Wikipedia 1.7% is the upper bound of all intersex variations in the population. It is important to acknowledge and accommodate these people. However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex.
As an example, about 9% of population is left-handed. When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talking about handedness?
I regularly mention that my grandmother was forced, with violence, to write with her right hand in school, and as a weird side effect would sometimes spontaneously start writing backwards.
I'm not sure what your point was in mentioning left-handedness, so not sure how this adds or detracts from it, but as I said I like to mention that because it's a weird little story from not so long ago.
> However their existence more often used as a weapon in discourse on adjacent topics like gender and identity but not necessarily specifically intersex.
Morally speaking, which is worse: weaponizing the fictional non-existence of intersex people to attack transgender people, some of whom are intersex; or weaponizing the actual existence of intersex people to defend transgender people, some of whom are intersex?
> When was the last time someone mentioned violence when talking about handedness?
My mom was beaten for writing left-handed, and she's still alive. While that is no longer popular in the US, the tradition is alive in the world.
Just to mention it, once I learned a little more about intersex people I very much feel for them: They often need the same medication that is now restricted due to anti trans legislation. They are also caught in stupid bathroom laws.
I do believe their existence is a good reason to not pass anti trans legislation, because they are affected as well, from birth.
The problem is that people use very (like VERY) rare edge cases to build a whole framework based on it and bully the rest. Typical tyranny of the minority.
My grandparents didn't forget. In late February 2020 I brought up the topic of the novel coronavirus going around and they weren't overly worried because they'd gone through a respiratory pandemic or two before (there was another one in 1968).
I think covid will be more memorable, partly because it was more serious, but also because our reaction to it was much stronger, especially in some parts of the world. My understanding is that there were generally only minimal efforts at containing those flu pandemics. Incidentally, my grandparents also had time off school because of the polio epidemic.
That said, the Spanish flu, the last respiratory pandemic comparable to covid (actually, worse) isn't remembered well. I wouldn't be surprised if most people have heard of it only because of covid.
One of the problems with the Spanish flu was governments covered it up. It didn't start in Spain, Spain just had better freedom of the press and newspapers could talk about it. That's where it got the name.
Since there was minor dispute in Europe going at the time, one that went on from 1914 to 1918, it was not that Spanish Flu that was censored, it was all news in all beligerent countries that was censored concerning the war, including the flu.
But yes, that's how it got the name. Most likely, it started in the US, was carried to Europe by the US Army, spread across front lines on the Western Front, and from there across the globe.
... and I thought you were in on it and joining in. Some horrors are so bad that save for those gifted with eloquence, sarcasm and humor is all that we have to deal with them.
I may be biased but I've visited grave sites from WWI and WWII and for some reason that seems to rule out humor around those subjects. There is something very special about standing on an immaculate war grave with thousands of little crosses in very neat rows each one of them the only evidence that someone died there to ensure that we would have our freedoms.
This is a complicated subject for me because I did not want to go into the army on account of not wanting to be someone else's pawn in wars of aggression, which NL has been on the wrong side of more than once. At the same time I absolutely recognize the requirement to defend countries against evil and I'm eternally grateful to those that made sure that we have a relatively free life here. Hard to square the two, I have always kept my balance in there by telling myself that if push came to shove I'd be more than willing to act. The Russian war on Ukraine is testing that position in complex ways.
> I did not want to go into the army on account of not wanting to be someone else's pawn in wars of aggression
Sentiments mirrored. During my younger days I used to want to, not being part of the physical fight but a technological one. Then I saw exactly what you have put in words, how people's lives, there families lives, were used as "someone else's pawn" to feed their political ambitions.
Ultimately, I went for the physical fighting. Refused military service and tried myself at competitive combat sprts (not very successfully).
In the end, ignoring the rare cases were the initially baddoes (tm) are clearly known, in most cases poor, young folks are forced to kill each other by rich and powerful old folks while everyone else is suffering. The average soldiers on both sides usually have more in common with eavh other than they have with theor respective leadership. That being said, and paraphrasing one of the alt right election ads I see round here, peace may actually require as much dead people as necessary in case beligerents are inwilling to end the war early. Or not even start one in the first place.
We visited Verdun this year, including Forts Vaux and Doaumont. The athmosphere, including the beautiful forest, around the battle fields is special. And outright spooky in the partially flooded forts.
Totally different from the D-Day beaches. The outright slaughter on WW1 battlefields is just incomprehinsible, and it shows at places like Verdun.
I helped some people locate the grave sites of ancestors, not all is as documented as you would like it to be and there are quite a few mix-ups in names and DOB and so on (there shouldn't be, but that's the reality). This meant we visited multiple such sites in a very short period of time, and after the first couple it starts to really get to you: I could do this all day, every day of the year and never visit the same place twice.
In NL alone there are 3900 sites dedicated to WWII graves, ranging from single individuals, airplane crews (of planes that have never been dug up) all the way to grave sites so large that you can't see one end from the other. It is more than just a little impressive to see row after row with the names of people that came thousands of kilometers to die defending a country that they had otherwise probably never visited or would have never visited. In France and Belgium there are fewer such sites but they tend to be (much) larger, Lorraine in particular is impressive in the same way that a visit to a former concentration camp is.
It strikes me as that those poor guys that came here to liberate these countries would each and every one of them be absolutely horrified to see the state of affairs today, the degree to which we have betrayed them is something that we will never be able to wash off. The fact that the ultra-right is now exactly the thing they fought against and that it is the children of the beneficiaries of their sacrifice that are bringing this evil back into the world is what I find most horrifying. Really, I never really got the 'history repeats itself' thing at the gut level until I made that connection.
WWI is similarly impressive, but I don't have any family members that had that in living memory who are alive any more. But my grandmother lived through both of these, WWI did not impact as much here as WWII so I know far more of the first hand stories about WWII. But that doesn't mean that I'm unmoved by the history and seeing the remains of it (the grave sites and the 'no go' sites that are still too dangerous today) is formative. The 'Zone Rouges' are expected to be around for at least several more centuries...
And I agree on the concentration camp visit, even if I'd say those places are even worse than military cemiteries. I only visited on so far, and that pretty recently, Dachau. Quite sobbering experience, and I only looked into the crematorium from the outside. And then you realize that Dachau was one of the better and less cruel camps the Nazis ran...
And yes, the right became what they fought: they supported the fight against the Nazis and oppossed the communist Soviets. Now they are supporting borderline fascist policies and Russia, oppose NATO (there are tons of stuff NATO did that deserve being opposed, but thise are not a problem for the right), and accept support from Putin...
My grandparents, both sides, lived actively through WW2 (soldiers, nurses and just young women teying to get along) in Germany. They never really talked about it, but it marked them. I never met my great-grand father who survived Verdun and some gas attacks in WW1 so. Overall, this period is still much closer than we think, too close maybe to be sure that we actually really passed it and wont go down that specific rabbit hole again.
The most widely cited theory is that the 1918 influenza pandemic originated in Haskell County, Kansas in early 1918.
Some key details:
Haskell County is a rural county in southwest Kansas, about 300 miles west of Kansas City.
In January and February 1918, local newspapers reported an unusual flu-like illness spreading in the county. This pre-dated flu reports from other U.S. areas by several weeks.
Dr. Loring Miner, a physician in Haskell County, observed this early outbreak and alerted the U.S. Public Health Service. He described an unusual respiratory illness that was spreading rapidly, but milder than the flu pandemic strain that emerged later.
Haskell County residents were known to have traveled to Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas in February and March 1918. In March, Camp Funston reported a severe flu outbreak, followed by rapid spread of flu across the U.S. and globally over the following year.
Leading researchers like John Barry, author of "The Great Influenza", have concluded that the timing and pattern of these outbreaks strongly points to the virus originating in Haskell County and spreading from there to Camp Funston.
However, it's not definitive. Without viral samples and genetic sequencing from that era, the precise geographic origin cannot be proven. But the Haskell County theory provides the strongest evidence based on historical timelines and early outbreak patterns.
Never heard that. If it began in Kentucky where did it come from? There are lots of caves in Kentucky so bats again? They seem like a reservoir species for a lot of respiratory viruses in this family.
I always assumed that people knew a fair bit about the Spanish flu, but maybe that’s due to my family history. My great-grandparents died of the Spanish flu, leaving my one-year-old grandfather and his older siblings as orphans. His birth parents were Swedish immigrants, and he was adopted by an American family. The change in surname is a marker of the event that stays with the family every day.
Mine didn't forget either. My grandmother almost died of it as a child. She was sent to a sick ward where patients were seen as a lost cause and not much care was provided. If you survived, good for you. Or if not, too bad but no surprise. She was there for a long time but eventually her body fought it off.
Also, all her hair fell out. Apparently this can happen with high fevers. When she went back to school, she wore a hat so she wouldn't get teased about her bald head.
There's a flu bug getting passed around
Spreading like fire through this town
There's a virus holing up inside us
Each one that I know is coming down
There's an Asian influenza
Infecting us all by the scores
And it's turning into pneumonia
We must go out once more
There's a fool moon howling at the night
And each bark is much worse than each bite
So we must go out and dance around
Yes we must go tonight
So the doctors came on the evening train
With their flasks and their caskets and vials
Mass psychosis was their diagnosis (yes)
So we all cashed our checks and went wild
There's a fool moon howling at the night
And each bark is much worse than each bite
So we must go out and dance around
Yes we must go tonight
La Grippe!, Salsa!
I think it's obvious that Asian countries will be the source of most epidemics because that's where most of the world lives.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next major epidemic comes from India, as that's the most populous country (though Indian's relatively large percentage of vegetarians and selective meat eaters should help prevent common infection patterns).
The Spanish flu (misleadingly named as it was first recorded in Kansas and only later reported in Europe) is kind of an outlier here, as was the Mexican swine flu.
My grandfather lost his mother when he was 10, in 1919. Despite going deep into family history research for decades, and talking about so much of it with him before he passed at 97 almost 20 years ago, I only learned in 2021 that she died from the Spanish flu, offhandedly from a family member. What a strange black hole of recollection.
My great grandmother did remember the Spanish flu, though it was hazy gauzy fragmentary sorts of memories much like my remembrance of the fall of the Berlin Wall or the first gulf war. She was born in 1909, and I was asking her about it in 2001 or 2002.
Even in Soviet Russia, when things were so dire people used to die in scores for a multitude of reasons in a country that was defeated in WWI, ravaged by revolutionary and counter-revolutionary gangs of all sort, with epidemics of cholera, typhus, and multitude of other diseases running entirely unchecked due to complete collapse of all institutions of organised society, the Spanish flu is remembered. Not as a "worst thing ever" it was in the U.S., but it is remembered.
My great great Aunt told me about the Spanish Flu as a child - there was a family story that one of her relatives defied his family's requests not to go to a dance, and then brought it home with him resulting in the deaths of a few of them.
Interestingly, my great great grandfather's first wife died from the Spanish Flu, and he remarried in his 50's and had more children (my line), so if not for that pandemic, then I would presumably would not be here.
I was born after the polio epidemic and after the measles vaccine. But those things were still fresh in the minds of adults and teens.
I remember getting vaccinated in the school cafeteria for the Hong Cong Flu. Kid in front of me who was a peckerhead had a complete meltdown and had to be held down in a chair by a couple of public health nurses.
I'd say it'll also be more memorable because there's petabytes of fine grained data of people living through it. So even with decay over time, there should be more info on it that survives than from the Spanish Flu.
MacVim and gVim. I've looked at neovim and there are many GUI options (paradox of choice), some of which I've tried, but at the end of the day, I'm more comfortable with what I'm already familiar with.
Likewise. I’m a heavy CLI user but gVim/MacVim are so entrenched in my workflow that the lack of a stable GUI for Neovim made it pretty much a nonstarter for me.
As some one who only uses vim/neovim in a terminal window - what’s the advantage of having GUI support in vim?
Mouse support in my terminal seems fine, even over ssh. Being able to do things like run it inside of a tmux session has always made it seem like the GUI would be a step back?
You can use gVim as a Notepad on steroids. You have the simplicity and familiarity of Notepad combined with the power vim, e.g. search & replace using regular expressions, syntax highlighting, the ability to delete 5 words by typing ESC d 5 w, plugins like fugitive and so on. I can't select text in neovim by pressing Shift and arrow keys. I can't copy text by pressing Ctrl+C.
I did the Vim -> NeoVim switch a while back (pre-vim9script) and lack of standardized GUI is a non trivial issue. There are solution(s) - but allof them have had too much friction to fit in a workflow for me. Definitely a concern.
"...but, but, that's illegal." Jenkins huffed out in an almost whisper.
"Jenkins, take out your wallet, and place it on the table. If you speak, I'll fire you on the spot. Do it." the CEO spat.
Jenkins trembled with rage but reached his right hand deftly into the inner folds of his suit, and produced his billfold. He waved it a bit and set it in front of him.
"Good, now push the package forward, and keep silent." the CEO growled at Jenkins.
Jenkins pushed his wallet out further from himself, and with a last shove pushed the wallet beyond his fingertips. Jenkins wiggled his fingers and sat back, raising his eyebrows at his bosses boss.
"Harold!" CEO Barcliff barked. "Take the package to logistics."
"Right away, sir." Harold nodded, retrieved the package and left the room.
"What the hell Barcliff!" Jenkins exploded.
"I suggest you call the card companies, and the DMV, for replacements." Barcliff stated in a deadpan low growl.
"Screw you Barcliff, call him back. I want my wallet. That's my life in there man!" Jenkins now yell-whined.
"Connely, Mirasu, Fender, Scotts, did any of you see this wallet Jenkins is whining about?" Barcliff almost sneered.
"No sir, I observed Jenkins deliver a package to Harold to be taken to logistics." Scotts spoke out before the others could speak. Nods all around though.
"You see Jenkins, illegal is only what you can prove. You can't prove shit. Just like they can't prove shit. Now get out of here before I fire your ass. Don't forget to say hi to the wife for me." Barcliff purred.
> The Gizmodo article has a ridiculously wrong “fair use” analysis, saying “Fair Use does not, by any stretch of the imagination, allow you to use an author’s entire copyrighted work without permission as a part of a data training program that feeds into your own ‘AI algorithm.’” Except… it almost certainly does? Again, we’ve gone through this with the Google Book scanning case, and the courts said that you can absolutely do that because it’s transformative.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure Fair Use doesn't mean you can download a dump of Library Genesis and feed that into your system!
If anything, 24GB is probably the sweet spot for what's optimised for as many local LLM enthusiasts are running 3090s and 4090s (and all want more VRAM).
My guess is your point is "is this effectively better" than beam search, I wondered the same thing. The paper doesn't mention it, which at least on the surface seems strange.
Beam search is like a breadth-limited breath-first search. This is more akin to a depth-first search where you give the model the ability to backtrack.
Some women do have penises. Some men have XX chromosomes. Some women have XY chromosomes. Some people have XX and XY chromosomes. Science tells us that. This has nothing to do with transgender people. But it does suggest "sex" might not be as simple as a metaphysical binary.