zerobits's comments

Thanks for the valid correction.

I didn’t mean to be disingenuous. I forgot they rejected that dosage.

Overall, the picture does look potentially concerning for the side effects of that vaccine and efficacy is still unclear.

The Moderna mRNA vaccine was producing 103 degree fevers (and passing out) in a Phase 1 volunteer. [1]

If that's the reaction in small sample with a healthy 29 year old (most volunteers had high fevers), I can't imagine old or unhealthy people will be unharmed. I was more concerned about the mRNA vaccines being at risk initially.

Things aren't looking great...

[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/26/moderna-vaccine-candidat...

Apparently this isn’t a huge recent change —- it was at 47% of young adults at the same time last year (now it’s 52%).

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...

Despite 80% of comments focusing on Wolfram's pompousness, this is an interesting expansion of cellular automata to arbitrary dimensions.

Coincidental timing of publication - one day after John Conway's passing. We may be in a n-dimensional Game of Life after all.

yes, this is a starting point. I agree this topic has considerable depth which I omitted.

there are 100s of great resources (Wolfram Alpha, Khan Academy, GitHub, Wiktionary, to name a few) and techniques (Google search tricks like using quotes, site: tag, etc., good habits like avoiding distractions) to augment Internet learning

you could evenly weight this area like any other class, and expect to spend many hours on it.

I actually do think most of the topics I mentioned are 'covered'. But many were covered briefly, as a day or week long unit in my personal experience, instead of as a core area.

My point isn't about crossing these items off a checklist, but re-balancing the effort we put towards these core skills, instead of memorizing arcane trivia about U.S. history, literary figures, and some impractical Math/English skills that seem to be more of the focus.

I went to a "good" school, whatever that means, but I've found myself and many of my peers lacked many of the skills and deeper understanding of these topics even during/after university.

I still meet many people who don't quite understand what a stock is, and most people seem surprised to hear Wi-Fi is a type of invisible light. Many people seem to be pretty bad at communication. About 1/3 of the US seems to not be convinced we are actually apes.

I agree with you -- we need to find better ways to teach deeper understanding rather than rote memorization.

at a minimum, it would've been nice to spend less time on brain-numbing repetitive tasks and test preparation.

there is value in memorization as a precursor to true understanding, you can't have understanding without association

examples:

- math: memorization of single digit addition/multiplication makes higher digit arithmetic easier, and comes in handy in higher-level math

- music: memorization of scales unlocks better ability to play & improvise songs (before deeper knowledge of how it relates to other notes/scales/modes, how this connects to dividing the frequencies of air waves, etc.)