mcgt | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: How many of you are actively making contingency plans to leave the U.S.?
mcgt's comments
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show
My thoughts were the same, but nothing I've seen (yet) would suggest that. Though deaths by dementia seem to be up far above the 5 year average (especially in the Southern US).
Total mortality up to Aug 15 is up at least 580k over the 5 year average from what I'm seeing right now, fwiw. Probably will post it here on HN once I've got everything tied together.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: The Covid-19 pandemic is worse than official figures show
I'm looking into this gap right now. In the US for example, deaths from dementia so far this year are much higher than the average for the past five years (up until ~Aug 15). There's also a not insignificant amount of notes saying deaths are being underreported in a lot of jurisdictions.
Pretty much across the board jumps for most major causes of death. Haven't pulled in anything on suicides yet. Interestingly though, deaths from lower respiratory disease are down for all regions of the US. I wondered how much that has to do with less traffic/air pollution which might otherwise aggravate that?
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: As Joe Rogan’s platform grows, so does the media and liberal backlash – why?
Those scientists must've felt some appeal going on Rogan's show, despite guests like Jones. That's probably why they agreed to it. How does that feed into a culture of anti-intellectualism?
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: US bans WeChat, TikTok from app stores, threatens shutdowns
>But instead we're lazy so we just want the president to be a dictator instead of safeguarding our republic.
Funny. I wrote my senator months ago about that encryption bill going around then. Just got a canned response back today, about how law enforcement should be able to access encrypted nformation, etc.
Poetically waxing about the effects of "writing your reps" is bullshit when they are entrenched with one another and, as you said, most Americans don't care enough to do it.
Maybe a better solution would be for the US to balkanize and allow localization to be more effective. Maybe a national identity more akin to the diverse regions of the US would be more like what you're describing.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: A variety of corn has evolved a way to make its own nitrogen (2018)
Bacteria fix nitrogen, not legumes.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: A variety of corn has evolved a way to make its own nitrogen (2018)
There's a better way to add nitrogen to soil and it's through the nitrogen cycle. The US Midwest (which grows a lot of corn) used to be highly populated with ruminants who did exactly this.
We killed them all (well, most) and now grow corn which we use most to finish off cattle, which is also a ruminant.
Maybe a better solution would be to feed the ruminants off the land now used by the corn? Imagine what that might do.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: Low Doses of LSD Acutely Increase BDNF Blood Plasma Levels in Healthy Volunteers
Wouldn't the data we have on mental health show that contemporary wisdom on its treatment is failing? Given spikes in rates of anxiety and depression over the past century, among other adverse effects, this isn't an unreasonable conclusion to make.
That said, maybe it's more important to look at how these have been dealt with in the past than the data we have in the present.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: Evangelicals are looking for answers online. They’re finding QAnon instead
>in my experience QAnon is the political arm of 4Chan
This is a spurious claim to make. Do you have any evidence of this? 4chan and 8kun have different owners who both hate each other.
Spreading gossip about problems as big as this does nothing good.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: Facebook Braces Itself for Trump to Cast Doubt on Election Results
As president of the US, it would be hard believing Trump's only ability to make this kind of case is on Facebook.
mcgt | 5 years ago | on: Facebook relaxed misinformation rules for conservative pages
>Because I believe it's the latter, and if you ban it, the hate campaigns don't vanish, they just start using other mediums.
While true that it may not be a source per se, Facebook enables those ideas whereas they would normally (at least, in the past) be relegated to the darkest corners of the web.
Take QAnon for example. The source is 8kun, which is accessible only through Tor and consisting of incel and white supremacist communities. Do you think the majority of people posting this material are getting it from the source in this case?
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Probably white nationalists. I'm not a subscriber to the idea of a full-scale civil war either but with the trends in growth for extremist groups and continued polarization I'd be surprised if violence DIDN'T erupt.
I don't think your wholesale condemnation that it's "nonsense" is helpful. I live in a rural area and, anecdotally, I've been seeing more and more open belligerence as Trump's prospects for reelection wane, fwiw