"Finally, looking at that figure you might wonder why the relative risk of smoking has increased so much. Based on my first pass through the literature, it seems like no one knows. There are at least three possibilities:
- Over this period, cigarettes have been reformulated in ways that might make them more dangerous.
- As the prevalence of smoking has decreased, it’s possible that the number of casual smokers has decreased more quickly, leaving a higher percentage of heavy smokers.
- Or maybe the denominator of the ratio — the risk for non-smokers — has decreased."
My first thought was "second hand smoke". My logic is, when smoking was more normalized, non-smokers were exposed to some of the same risk as smokers due to smoking indoors, etc, resulting in higher rates of lung cancer among non-smokers.
"Instead, they’ll be reminiscing about watching a Twitch streaming millionaire child screaming racial slurs as he rail-guns his opponents on Fortnite."
This perspective is reductive and insulting. There are many great, wholesome creators on YT/Twitch who put a lot of work to make their content welcoming and intellectually engaging, even if they are seemingly just playing video games. Just because the author doesn't like it doesn't make this remotely accurate to the real world.
I think in this case, the hypothetical lawsuits would be between companies that make iOS apps and Apple. The companies that make iOS apps want to have their own payment system where Apple doesn't take a cut.
I don't think its that simple, because it doesn't have to be all or nothing. I think CA has the right idea to lift restrictions at the state level so that less at-risk rural areas can try it out. It will give an idea as to what LA county would need to do: if things go okay then a reopen is reasonable, if people don't feel comfortable without some kind of "distancing" rules then those would need to be considered, or something else.
So yeah, of course there is a point in debating such a question. And there are real ways to find answers. Probably even better ones than what I said.
I think this is a valid point, but one consideration that feels missing from a lot of these kind of disucussions is to what extent the economy will "come back", even if every restriction were lifted.
If people are afraid to be in public, then the restaurants, bars, and shops won't see full-scale business return. Those jobs and business will be lost anyway, perhaps with more people infected than necessary. Or, we try and find some middle-ground "new normal" that lets people feel safe in public. Or something else? I have no idea and I doubt many people in this comment section really know either.
A bit tangential, but this reminded me of Dexter Holland [0] the lead singer and songwriter of the band The Offspring. He went on to get a PhD in molecular biology (not an honorary one) and publish various papers about HIV.
I feel like trying out various languages/frameworks would affect compsci labs a lot less than other fields, since the students probably have some foundational knowledge of languages and have already learned a few before getting there. Might be easier for them to pick up new ones.
(a) While I'm being honest that my observations are based on the fields I have experience, there is no such justification that "It is true broadly for computation in academia" in your comment.
(b) Interpreting "niche" as "small" (especially given your "true broadly" claim): Computational genetics is huge in terms of funding dollars and number of researchers.
> Python has been the defacto standard in scientific/data/academic programming for decades
In my experience (Genomics) this is simply not true. Python has caught on over the last 5 or so years, but prior to that Perl was the defacto language for genetic analysis. Its still quite heavily used. Perl is not a paragon of simplicity and clarity.
- Over this period, cigarettes have been reformulated in ways that might make them more dangerous.
- As the prevalence of smoking has decreased, it’s possible that the number of casual smokers has decreased more quickly, leaving a higher percentage of heavy smokers.
- Or maybe the denominator of the ratio — the risk for non-smokers — has decreased."
My first thought was "second hand smoke". My logic is, when smoking was more normalized, non-smokers were exposed to some of the same risk as smokers due to smoking indoors, etc, resulting in higher rates of lung cancer among non-smokers.