woofie11's comments

1) That a lot of allergic reactions come from actually touching a dog or having the dog touch something; they don't need to leave fur behind for that to happen.

2) That licking hair/fur releases the same amount of dander, whether your shedding fur, hair, or neither. Matter is conserved.

3) That clumps of fur are easy to avoid.

I don't think there is a database of allergic reactions people have had. They just happen and people move on. If the question is narrow enough, e.g., "Has there ever been anaphylaxis in response to a dog named Woofers jumping on a 12-year-old girl in New York's Central Park?" the answer will be "No."

However, there have been plenty of instances of severe asthmatic reactions to dogs in situations in all relevant respects similar to drug/bomb-sniffing animals. And I've seen plenty of allergic reactions to service animals.

People react to different amounts of allergens. For some, it requires direct contact. For others, it's enough to be in vaguely the same room.

Service animals are tougher, since both sides have a disability and medical need. Police dogs should be easier, if not for police generally being power-hungry thugs.

Asthma attacks are not uncommon in response to dog dander. Those can be life-threatening, but can be managed with albuterol. 30 seconds with Google will turn up countless documented instances.

Anaphylaxis is a very rare response to animal dander, but there have been a few documented instances:

https://www.petful.com/misc/can-pet-allergies-kill-me/

What's amazing is the number of dog owners who don't believe in dog allergies, or who believe their dogs are hypoallergenic due to fur/hair (dander is in the saliva).

My perception is both the manufacturer and I were the victims of fraud, while Amazon was the enabler. Now, I wish the company didn't fulfill through Amazon, but that's not a crime or a fraud.

One of my worst experiences was ordering direct from a little vendor (not HDD) to avoid Amazon scams.

The vendor added a markup to Amazon prices, and fulfilled with Amazon. I'm pretty sure I got a fake, ordering direct from the manufacturer.

I'll withhold names, so as not to embarrass anyone.

I do give credit to those reasons. Those reasons are fine, logical, and rational. My experience is that they more-or-less correspond to why the people I know who don't take vaccines don't take then.

The existence of better reasons to be vaccinated doesn't negate those at all.

The central problem is that the establishment, at some point, began to lie more and more. We've entered a post-truth age. I'm part of the scientific establishment, and I see that a lot.

I personally have enough background in biology that I can evaluate the virtually non-existent risks of vaccines for myself, as well as the significant risks of COVID19. That's why I'm vaccinated.

If I didn't have that scientific background -- and most people don't -- I might be an anti-vaxxer for all the reasons listed in the article.

Until you can acknowledge that the concerns are valid and real, you're not getting anywhere. I convinced one person who was unvaccinated, for precisely those reasons but who trusted me, not by ridiculing their logic, but by explaining how, in this particular case, I'd walked through the evidence and they were safe. She trusts me, and she's now vaccinated.

On a more basic level, if both sides of the political spectrum stopped lying to "win," I don't think we'd have this problem.

It's trying to build empathy for a viewpoint. Understanding and empathizing isn't the same as agreeing.

I've had 100% empathy for the opposite side of the political spectrum for a long time now. I talk to people there, and I try to understand their perspective. I also try to understand the Taliban's perspective, China's, and otherwise. I'm sometimes successful, and sometimes not, but I try.

The reason I am vaccinated is because I have a (modest) background in biology, and I understand the science personally. If I didn't, I might be skeptical too.

We need more articles like this one. You can't convince people without understanding them first, and really empathizing. To quote:

“Know yourself and know your enemy. You will be safe in every battle. You may know yourself but not know the enemy. You will then lose one battle for every one you win. You may not know yourself or the enemy. You will then lose every battle.” Art of War 3:6:1–6

What I find obnoxious, and typical of MIT, is how credit is allocated.

"Copyright © 2009--2015 H. Miller"

Only hmm (H. Miller) didn't do the work. The "About" page, fortunately, lists the authors, but doesn't really credit who did what.

Nothing personal about hmm, but a lot personal about the MIT culture of credit theft. MIT didn't have this culture 25 years ago. If this was © MIT, it'd be okay. But it's the PI on the project, who often doesn't do much of anything, who gets to pick-and-choose what goes to whom, and more often than not, allocate anything of value back to themselves.

Yes, the algebra works, but you lose the intuition for what's going on.

There's a pattern of factorial terms you see with successive integrations: 1/1, 1/2, 1/6, 1/24, 1/n!,

Multiplying by 2 changes this to 2, 1, 1/3, 1/12, 2/n!.

I view that as a clear loser, not a winner.

It doesn't preclude the need to mask up around vaxed folks either. Delta is spreading in part because vaxed folks stopped taking precautions, trusting in vaccines. That's not good for anyone. Vaxed folks won't get severe cases, but the jury is still out on long COVID. It also applies strong evolutionary pressure to vaccine-jumping mutations.

Note: Before anyone jumps on the above statement, I'm not trying to imply anything else. Vaxed folks who don't take reasonable additional precautions ARE a major source of spread COVID19. That's not meant as a comparative statement (unvaxed folks are ALSO a major source of spread).

I dislike this.

The ½ comes from an integration. Whenever you see a square term in an equation, there's often a corresponding ½.

Yes, we could "simplify" equations by getting rid of the ½ and squashing it into the units, but at that point, all of the stuff makes less sense.

I do physics with kids, and often show area (usually of a triangle) as the distance traveled with constant acceleration, the energy of something, the accumulated debt or what-not. The source of the ½ is very obvious -- we're looking at a triangle and not a rectangle.

Increasingly nominally. Right now, the protection is about 50%. I expect it will continue to fall as the virus evolves.

50% is a lot from a public health perspective -- there's a huge difference in the exponent -- but not something you can rely on to keep yourself or your relatives safe.

For the most part, these types of researchers don't publish in venues their claimed beneficiaries can't read:

* It sets up horrible power dynamics in advocacy (parents with journal subscriptions can't advocate for their kids or engage in civic discourse)

* It prevents kids from less affluent populations from having even the possibility of engaging with real research

* It prevents a crucial check-and-balance of public review by the people written about.

There is a long British line of research ABOUT other cultures, without treating those cultures as partners or equals, and most education research follows these lines.

The author of this paper is white, has a Western last name, and studied in American schools. He writes a lot about minorities, but without them involved in the process. Education is a place where, objectively, representation is important.

I'd like to read the whole text too.

No, I'm not defending the CCP's actions, and my best argument for the CCP is that I'd like a diversity of economic, political, and cultural systems around the world. I don't like monocultures. They're brittle.

> On experimentation, communism and authoritarianism have been tried many, many times. There's nothing novel or experimental about it. We know it sucks. We know what Taliban style Islamic theocracies are like too, Afghanistan has been under one before remember?

And Democracy was tried several times during the French Revolution, as well as in many countries in Africa, to great failure. You can't generalize from small n.

It's really unclear how Communism would have worked out if not for Stalin. Communism isn't fundamentally authoritarian. The concept of workers soviets as a political system sounds pretty plausible to me. Things played out that way, but it's only been tried once.

And as far as a planned economy, I think the feasibility really changes with access to computers which can simulate complex systems. Market economies are a greedy algorithm. It's likely there's a better system.

What I like in the current Chinese model is market economy for commodity businesses (like restaurants) and central control of rent-seeking ones (like banking). That seems more efficient. I also like the concept of systems of governance which are more meritocratic (which contrasts with populist ideals in the US), where competent people make decisions, and where you can plan strategically over long periods. I don't think China has yet stumbled on the right model there. But they're trying.

Well, the US did kinda oops away a million Muslims in response to 9/11, and over a half-million Americans in lack of response to COVID19. And we do have that whole gitmo thing. Plus, we had the whole slavery bit we keep forgetting about. I could list this stuff for a while, but that's besides the point.

It's not the current state that matters, but possible future outcome.

We're both hill-climbing trying to improve systems from an imperfect present. The US is higher up its hill than China right now, but it's not clear that China won't pass the US in a few decades. Or the US will race ahead. Or how other systems will fare.

It's also not clear how those will change as the world itself evolves.

I like having a diversity of political and economic systems, even is some are better than others. I also like a diversity of cultures, even if there are ones I strongly disagree with.

#simulatedannealing #geneticalgorithms

There's a famous quote attributed to Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” The only way we'll find better ones is if we keep exploring.

It's not so much that I want more or fewer regulations, as I want to explore systems other than market-based incentives. I'm not sure that regulations + free markets will get us to a place where people aren't addicted to video games, eat healthy, exercise, have quality education, and generally lead the good life. In 1930, there were a lot of ideas for how to get there, and a lot of those seem plausible. I'd like to see how some of those play out in practice.

I'll mention that I'm aware of where China is with regards to labor practices, freedom-of-speech, and so on, but with regards to public health systems, China is way ahead of the US. Everyone has access to decent, affordable healthcare. It's not at the same level as $50,000 procedures in the US, but it's good enough, and everyone has it.

It's also not really fair to compare countries with $64k per-capita GDP to ones with $10k per-capita GDP. It's even more unfair if one considers where the per-capita GDP was a decade or two ago. 25 years ago, China had a per-capita GDP of under $1000 -- that's less than Nigeria today. I think that's a more fair comparison between systems of government. Would you rather live in Nigerian democracy or Chinese CCP? That's not a loaded question -- they're quite different.

> Oh good grief.

Islam has a lot of good ideas too. For example, it has a wealth tax, and it discourages debt-based economies. You don't need to swallow political and economic systems wholesale.

I'm no more or less comfortable with authoritarian government than I am with an authoritarian market-based corporatocracy.

Odds are that you are under an NDA which limits your freedom of speech. Odds are that if you refused to sign one, you couldn't afford a mortgage in a place with a lot of tech. Odds are you will sign more NDAs so your kids can keep going to the same school. The freedom of no regulation is an illusion.

Companies will keep making what sells, even if it's bad for you. Without regulation, video games will become more and more addicting. Without regulation, companies will keep running advertising, even if ads harm culture and the overall economy.

To manage all of this, we need a better system. I, for one, am excited about countries trying something different. The CCP seems to be implementing a lot of measures which stand to increase overall quality-of-life, from limiting stress on kids, to workforce stress, to limiting unhealthy activities. I'd like to see how that plays out.

As a footnote, I'd even be excited about a fundamentalist Muslim government in Afghanistan, if it wasn't expansionary, and if people were free to emigrate if it was't working for them.

I can think of close to zero times when I would need my full photo collection, in full resolution, all at once. In most cases, for showing photos, even 1080p highly-compressed is fine. In rare cases, I want to edit an old photo, and I want the original RAW file in full color depth and resolution.

Well, my experience is that grey/black markets and crime pop up virtually everywhere where people can't afford to make an honest living which covers food and housing.

Once you reach a certain bar, people do the right thing.

$40k isn't enough to cover the cost of research+reporting at livable salaries, let along overhead, fake starts, etc.

1) Microsoft could afford $10M

2) I think people would be honest well short of $10M

3) The cost to customers, if this went public, would be far more than $10M.

You want people to be able to make an honest living on security research, or otherwise, the only people looking for vulnerabilities, aside from the independently wealthy hobbyists, will be crooks.