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throwaway_4253

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throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Aw, come on, way to miss the point. Even African American Grandmas were glued to their televisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They lived through the Vietnam protests, the 70's oil shock, Nixon's resignation and stagflation, and then saw the Berlin Wall fall in the 80's. As someone born in the 80's, I can only imagine the difference between what they thought and felt during 9/11 compared to me.

They (usually) have something which younger generations will always struggle with (simply by the nature of not being there), which is _perspective_ on which things are important at what scales. That isn't to say they're always (or even usually) right about everything, but their opinion should at least be valued as part of the conversation.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Hmm, I think there's a difference between heavily fictionalized external personal drama and the diffuse, anxiety-provoking miasma of social media and mainstream news headlines feeds.

Even if there isn't a huge difference, I feel like the relationship is more like that of an alcoholic or other addict. Do addicts really "like" their drug? Surely most of them know at some level that it's really unhealthy, and there's diminishing pleasurable returns even in the short term, but they still crave it as a release from their short term anxieties and problems.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
There are conflicting stories, but I've heard a few different arguments (I'm not sure how accurate any of them are, though):

  * The vaccine is stronger than a low-viral-dose infection; you wind up with more antibodies and more T/B cell engagement, so theoretically more robust immunity
  * The vaccines might be better or worse than natural infection against the variants; on the one hand your body fought a whole wild virus and so the antibodies aren't restricted to the spike protein, like in the mRNA case, so your body might be less overfit. On the other hand, the vaccines seems to producer a stronger immune response, as stated above, so that might be better if the antibodies still mostly line up?
Honestly, even if I had Covid before, it seems to make sense to get vaccinated anyhow. It's free (man, why aren't all vaccines free?), Your employer is very unlikely to give you a hard time for getting it, or taking some time off for recovering from the common side effects of the second dose - it feels like the potential benefits (stronger immunity) outweigh the very limited risks (basically limited flu symptoms and a possible bruise at the injection site).

As a weird side note, at least among my cohort, the side effects seem to be a really clear marker of who's immune system recognizes the disease. My friends who didn't catch it all reported no problems the first time and symptoms on the second shot. My friends who tested positive reported symptoms from the first shot. I had to start immunosuppression after the first shot, but before the second (TNF Alpha Inhibitor), and the symptoms at the second shot were actually a relief that my immune system hadn't been tamped down too hard...
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
> * Right now, not doing so is a strong social signal that you’re a special kind of belligerent asshole that probably hasn’t been vaccinated, and wants to pick a fight... *

Man, I'm sorry, but you read like the belligerent one here, judging people from afar. I wear a mask when possible (and will also likely continue to do so, despite being fully vaccinated) but this self-righteous attitude I think is an enormous part of the cultural problem.

I have always tried to follow a blend of cautious common sense and the science here, so my policy throughout the pandemic has always been - Always wear a mask when indoors (other than at home or in my car alone) - Wear a mask outdoors when it's difficult to remain less than 10 (not even 6) feet from other people. If I need to pass someone on a sidewalk, or someone's approaching me at an intersection, I put my mask on. And I make sure to cover my nose. And even with the mask on, I will usually opt to go into the street or otherwise create distance.

Despite this, I have been shouted at by people more than 30 feet away across a street and from people driving cars(!) about walking outdoors without a mask at times, when nobody has been anywhere near me. I'm sorry but this is just asinine. There has to be some time when it's ok to not be wearing a mask when you're not at home. I wear glasses and am otherwise visually impaired (I have an autoimmune disease which inflames my retinas). When I wear a mask, it tends to fog my glasses and make my vision even worse, sometimes dangerously so (I've been nearly hit by bicycles riding on the sidewalks tens of times - you can't hear them coming when they decide to come up behind you on the sidewalk despite the presence of the perfectly good bike lane) If I wore a mask while driving my reduced vision would make me many many times more dangerous than an unvaccinated person not wearing a mask outdoors, and yet I see this behavior all the time - even when the driver is alone in their car!

Furthermore, one of the times I was shouted at, I actually had a painful cut on my face, and wearing the mask aggravated it. I still would wear the mask if I was in a store or actually anywhere near someone outdoors, but that didn't stop someone from berating me from across a four lane street!

I keep seeing these self-righteous claims throughout these threads that "there is no reason not to wear a mask". Frankly I think these folks are mentally lazy - I learned in my first philosophy course that it's dangerous to use any kind of universal quantifier in your reasoning. I also learned that it's better to show empathy if possible, or at least extend the benefit of the doubt, but for some reason this pandemic and the politics seem to have completely shut any nuance and / or compassion off.

On top of that, you admit further down in this thread that you would just choose not to engage someone you didn't know. I'm sorry, but that means that you shouldn't complain about them, then. It doesn't seem like you've given yourself any hope of arriving at a more charitable conclusion than "this person is a belligerent asshole".

Ugh. Apologies for the tone. I'm not anti-mask, but I think this stopped being about the masks a long time ago, and the fact that we can't seem to collectively recognize it is incredibly frustrating.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
I think this depends a lot on what the task is. If your goal is explicitly to build a factory or a real estate empire, then you're probably right. You're not going to get very far without a bunch of capital to start.

However, if your goal is to do something legitimately creative, I agree with the spirit of the article. Indie game developers often work absolute wonders in spite of (or maybe because of?) Their limitations, whereas super heavily funded giants like Google and Amazon seem to be unable to think through any problem where the solution isn't dependent on "we have really deep pockets; buy the creative talent"

https://kotaku.com/bloomberg-report-reveals-major-dysfunctio...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/02...
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Ironically, it could be argued that it's easier when Facebook is the only player in town; otherwise the argument might be "But my competition does it! It's a race to the bottom - I can't compete if I act ethically!"
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss medicine; we all just witnessed mRNA paying off its research tab, so it would seem.

CRISPR is at the beginning of its journey, but monoclonal antibodies are practically miraculous to people with a lot of autoimmune conditions. I have one which almost certainly would have blinded me 30 years ago. Today I can get an (admittedly enormously expensive, we still have progress to make there) IV infusion every couple of months which has practically no side effects and effectively forces the disease into remission. This drug (Remicade) wasn't around when I was born, and I'm only 39.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Just for clarity, how are you defining "Wealth" here? I tend to think of knowledge and skills as a form of Wealth, but it's reasonable for that to be debated; especially if all you're measuring is relative positions in a commodities market.

Either way, I think it's possible to argue that the US did generate Wealth in WW2, in the sense that it developed new technologies and knowledge that were eventually shared worldwide (I'm thinking mass production of materials like plastics, antibiotics, better research on nutrition, etc, statistical engineering techniques which eventually helped build up the Japanese auto industry), and that it trained a large portion of its population via the G.I. Bill and women working in factories, etc.

(None of this is to belittle all the damage done by the bombs, etc, and the US did have a massive advantage in non having it's production capacity wrecked like Europe, Russia and Japan. The broken window fallacy is a real thing)
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Maybe this is a bit out of the spirit of the question, but I think of a lot of "domestic" skills this way, like cooking, cleaning and home maintenance, and knowing specialized dressing and hygiene. This stuff requires considerable time and effort to be good at, and you wind up paying a lot to get someone else to do it for you. Covid has forced me to actually live in my apartment (instead of just sleeping and showering here) and I've increasingly learned that the housewives of yore were actually a lot like managers and process engineers - they constantly need to take inventory and think ahead in order to efficiently keep ahead of all the entropy added in regular life.

It might also be considered a "soft skill", but there are some communication skills I think are really valuable in a technical space; like knowing which diagram to make which will most effectively summarize the complexity of your system and is appropriate for your audience. The tools for constructing that drawing will change, but the activity of sketching for communication isn't going anywhere.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Wait, I'm confused reading this. It's really hard to make out which of the abusive behaviors here are Google's, and which are Modis'. I don't really understand the relationship between those two institutions. (I'm assuming there's plenty of fault on both sides here, but it would be nice to understand the specifics)

How much of her direct day to day life is set by Modis? I figure Google pays Modis and Modis pays her? (If so, how much of a cut is Modis keeping?) Did Google directly provide her water bottle, or did it need to go through Modis? It looks like the threatening email she received claiming that she couldn't discuss compensation came from a Modis manager, not a Google one? Which managers were in the room when she was fired for her Facebook post? (I'm assuming Google ones, since they're on-site?)
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Yeah, I guess that's one way of looking at it; I guess on my first read of the comments I saw it as a related rates problem where "the act of climbing the stairs adds a velocity away from the Sun", but yeah, the second comment makes the case that at certain times of year the sum of the Earth's velocity and your stairs could still be positive in the "towards sun" direction.

(Sigh) this is why I'm poorly suited for Twitter...
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
I could be wrong, but I think the GP was commenting specifically about time of day? At idealized midnight the vector between you and the sun goes through the center of the Earth, indicating that increasing altitude takes you away from the Sun, instead of towards it. At idealized Noon, the opposite is true.
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
> Look back 50 years, not 100 years.

This observation is often trotted out, but I'm not sure it's fair. 50 years ago was no picnic, either. We were mired in the Cold War (Vietnam, no less). Nixon was in the White House. There was tons of social unrest (Nixon wrote in his memoirs about the thousands of bomb threats and attempted bombings). Civil rights / racial tensions were extremely high (MLK was assassinated in '68). The 70's were an absolutely terrible economic decade - oil shock and stagflation, anyone?

> huge increase in labor supply: outsourcing, women entering workforce in large numbers

I recall watching a presentation a few years back on this, but sadly I can't find the link. This appears to be a follow-up on the research, though. (From the Brookings Institute -https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...

In 1970, women entered the workforce, so you would have expected productivity to double, so GDP would have doubled, and thusly everyone's standard of living, right?

Instead what happened is all that extra capital drove up costs in housing and healthcare. Credit cards were introduced and the savings rate plummetted. Instead of having tons of extra money, everyone actually wound up in debt instead. (Please note: I'm not blaming women entering the workforce for this phenomenon; it was totally our surrounding economic system)

My high level point is that I think young people back then had a lot of reason to feel precarious and not trust in their institutions to act in their interests. We probably suffered a lot for it then, but we did eventually build our way out of it, for at least a short while, even if it feels like we're essentially further down the economic path now.

Edit: cleaned up typo and link, sorry
throwaway_4253
·5 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
I wonder if you're unfairly conflating the term "social capital" with the general caustic meanness of economic "capitalism". Putnam is a political scientist, not an economist.

I honestly think that most of the relentless unpleasantness of capitalism doesn't come from capital itself, it comes from competition and conflict over scarce resources. It's this conflict between different pools of capital which makes capitalism relentless and exhausting, and the fact that such conflicts are often won by the side which starts with more for unrelated reasons which makes capitalism unfair and often of very questionable morality. I think it's relevant to the article to point out that I this model, all of these conflicts are essentially low trust environments since the actors have by definition opposing goals.

But "social capital" doesn't have to be about conflict. Let's say I am fortunate enough to have a friendly relationship with my next door neighbors. To give a cliched example, let's say I want to bake a cake and am running low on sugar. Being able to ask them allows me to finish my task without stopping everything to run to the store. Likewise, if they need to leave town for an emergency, they can call me to check on their place or walk their dog.

These examples don't involve any conflict, so it's not clear who's losing out on any of them*? The social capital of our friendship definitely made us more productive, but who wouldn't want that? This isn't about pleasing some kind of corporate manager and churning out more widgets, it's just about personal quality of life, so what's left for there to be a problem with the idea of social capital?

* I suppose if we're being extreme then we could say that the sugar providers and grocery store lost in the first exchange by my ability to avoid buying another bag. I'm not sure this is entirely true, though, since I'm very likely to buy more sugar on my next trip anyhow. They've lost out on the urgency perhaps, but as a side note I believe that urgency is the core of the other worst aspects and cruelty of commercial capitalism; urgency sometimes forces incredibly wasteful behavior in the name of "winning the race" against a competitor or many other kinds of artificial deadlines, etc. (Anyhow I digress...)
throwaway_4253
·6 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
Hmm... I think it's a good idea to discuss the inequities in our economy for sure, and nuanced discussions about the impact of mega-billionaires would be really healthy.

But this article doesn't really seem to be in good faith. It measures the wealth of billionaires since the stock market bottom in March to today. I thought it was pretty well known that "the 1%" has most of their wealth in stocks. That just means that when the stock market recovered, so did the wealth of people who were invested.

Calling out names and showing a cute graphic doesn't seem constructive; better conversations would be about why the stock market actually did "recover" in the middle of a terrible pandemic with huge job loss, or how we could get to a world where all Americans could benefit from stock market recovery (401k's kind of make this happen a bit).

This article seems more like outrage-bait. At least show the graph from Jan 1,2020 to Dec 21, 2020. No need to show headshots in your info-graphic, either :/
throwaway_4253
·6 ปีที่แล้ว·discuss
I think it's inconvenient in a number of cases - if you have an injury on your face that the mask irritates, if you're trying to eat or drink while walking, or if you're wearing glasses which fog up.

The glasses thing is actually a pretty critical issue. I've seen people wearing masks and glasses by themselves in cars while driving with the windows closed. In that scenario fogging glasses makes wearing the mask more dangerous to people around you than not wearing the mask...

Of course, none of this is to say that in all these cases, even outdoors, that you shouldn't wear the mask if you can't social distance or need to go indoors. You totally should! But giving people the stink eye when they're 30 ft away from everyone else and outside and mask-less seems a bit much. It doesn't seem like there's any justification for that outside of shaming non-conformity.

Other commenters here are saying things like - if there's a .0001% chance this pre ents harm to you or others, then it's your duty to not do it. I'm a teetotaler; I wonder if these folks drink alcohol.