Tophattingson
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User ID: 1078
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Yeah, that's a possible cofounder. A very small correlation between BMI and income could instead appear as a huge correlation if those that are actively seeking to maximize income correctly identify that they need to have a BMI of 20, and those that aren't maximizing income don't bother. However, "smart fitness plan" probably just means eating less. It's BMI that's being measured here, not muscle mass.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Two interesting things from this.
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Though the error bars are probably too big to really be certain about this result, 20 being the sweetspot and below this being worse points to underweight also being bad. There's a whole bunch of drama about the supposed attractiveness of "size zero" with the implication that beauty standards drive people to be unhealthily underweight, but this data very marginally contradicts that claim.
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BMI is about the most mutable characteristic that income could depend upon as a sex worker. Certainly far easier to change your BMI than your height, your age, your sex, or your ethnicity! If anything, these results bode well for the prospects of a wide range of people having the capability to become a high-earning escort: Just be the right weight. If I could double my income by reducing my BMI from around 24 to 20, I certainly would do whatever I could to make that happen.
I didn't have Covid (I test regularly here), but I went into the medical clinic at the main media center today, and they said I probably have bronchitis. They gave me a course of antibiotics and some heavy-duty cough syrup, and I'm already feeling a bit better just a few hours later. But still: No bueno.''
There's something about this that is... well, not humorous, that's a bit too dark considering he just died. But certainly odd. Wahl was repeatedly tested for something relatively benign that he didn't have, while actually being ravaged by something that was a "probably" which wasn't further investigated.
Then again, I keep hearing something along the lines of "I'm ill, but don't worry, I tested myself for covid and don't have that, so it might be -something worse- instead" and whenever I do I can hear the thin rope of restraint in my brain grow ever-more taut as it begins to fray. We (collective, not me personally) seem to be stuck in some pointless doomloop of covid testing where tests are done for little apparent reason, as if the test itself is the treatment.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
It really does feel like there Parliament is there to serve the Australian public. Sorry to bash our American cousins, but in stark contrast when I visited Congress you had to book a tour, and had to be escorted around the entire time. I understand that security may be a bigger concern for you Americans, but the ability to more-or-less freely walk around the most important political body is the prime example of why I love and appreciate Australian democracy.
I do not think "ability to walk around the Parliament" is a good judge of the quality of any particular democracy. The best judge of that is what happens to people who attempt to peacefully disagree with government policy, a core element of democracy. Australia's rather recent history of state violence against political opposition to it's covid response, from using the police to violently attack protesters to arresting pregnant women for regime-critical facebook posts, puts to rest any idea that Australia is a high-quality democracy. For all it's flaws, America still managed to do better than Australia on this.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Fratelli d'Italia reached 32% of popularity in the last polls.
In most places it seems like it is unusual for a party to keep gaining in the polls like this (~+4% in two months) after an election win. Is this normal for Italy or is there some other mechanism explaining this?
Tophattingson
3yr ago
12/20.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Here's a possible steelman of the Vaccine heart attack theorists, using the most compelling case I have managed to come across.
Covid uses the ACE2 receptor to get into cells. Oxford-Astrazeneca is a viral vector vaccine. This works by inserting the chosen DNA into the cell via a virus that has been engineered to not be able to replicate itself, but instead only deliver this payload. The chosen virus for this is ChAdOx1, a simian adenovirus, chosen because adenoviruses are common, mostly harmless, and while humans often have neutralizing antibodies from prior adenovirus infections, they are unlikely to have them for simian adenoviruses. This means it interacts with the Coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (CAR) instead of the ACE2 receptor.
Many critics of vaccine side-effect hypotheses claim that, as the vaccines merely make your cells produce the spike protein, any side effects of the vaccines must necessarily be a subset of the consequences of getting covid. However, the vector used to deliver this payload is changed, and the vector itself can have it's own properties. Pfizer has lipids, but more importantly, and with a clearer link to potential side effects, Astrazeneca has Adenovirus and it interacts with CAR.
Adenoviruses are already known to have myocarditis as a rare complication.
First, adenovirus is an established cause of acute myocarditis (14). Adenovirus can enter cardiomyocytes by binding to a common transmembrane receptor [coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR)], induce direct myocardial injury, and trigger an uncontrolled immune response even after viral clearance (15).
Astrazeneca has been the frequent target of criticism over blood clotting issues, leading to withdrawals or recommendations to only use it on people above a certain age.
However, I'm not sure if this is a real steelman. More like an unobtainium-man, because the whole Astrazeneca episode has largely been invisible from the most prominent vaccine critics online, which are all American. It was never approved for use in the US. So even though this is the strongest case for the argument that covid vaccines (or at least, this specific one) lead to heart issues, it gets overlooked.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
This particular fight certainly had an effect on me. When the UK regime reimposed lockdowns for a third time at the start of 2021, in the absence of legal means to protest this, I took myself off the organ donor registry. This was based on two ideas.
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The majority of the population here supports lockdowns. Therefore, on average, my organs would be donated to someone who supports lockdowns. I see no reason to gift such people my lovely organs.
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The medical institutions of this country seem to view me as nothing more than a metaphorical sack of meat, to be used and disposed of as they wish. So, at least, I can stop them using me as a literal sack of meat. I don't exist to serve the NHS. I don't exist to be a pile of spare organs for the NHS.
When various places began discriminating against unvaccinated people when it came to receiving organ donations, this added a third motivation. I will not participate in vaccine apartheid, and if my organs would only be given to vaccinated people, the only way to do that is refuse to donate organs.
Obviously my thoughts on blood donation are similar, though the process is different. However, SafeBlood could serve as a way for me to donate to people who, while not directly opposed to my false incarceration, hold views that are a shibboleth for that.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Low capital intensity, low productivity, high labour requirement services are, IMO, not sustainably accessible for lower-middle income unless there is a very large gulf between their incomes and unskilled labour incomes. The go-to example is that the cost of childcare is only affordable for the middle class when those doing the childcare are paid extremely poorly, and hence affordable childcare actually signals greater inequality, rather than equality. Food delivery also fits into this pattern. Prior to the proliferation of venture capital cash burning apps, food delivery in the UK, for instance, was limited mainly to chains where the cost of delivery was built into the higher price they'd charge, and you'd usually see this achieved through various half-price collection-only offers.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
I wish western intelligence services were strong enough to incite anti-lockdown revolts in China, but you're making them sound way cooler than they actually are.
Why would western intelligence services decide, in 2022, to ignite the exact sort of protests they spent much of 2020, 2021 and 2022 trying to stop? Especially when it's already known that such protests have an awful habit of spreading across borders with copycat protesting, such as when the freedom convoy in Canada had copycats as far flung as Europe and New Zealand.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
But it would have big ramifications for whether our elites would welcome this new China with open arms. Lets put it this way. Wildest dream outcome for the protesters, Xi is overthrown and a new government founded on individual liberties and the rejection of technocrats replaces it. This would be so appealing to me that I'd immediately start learning Mandarin so I can move there / defect to China.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
The problem is that The West these protesters want to embrace already ceased to exist.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Many speculated on the reasons behind China's doggedness. Ranging from covid actually being bad and them knowing about it.. because they made it ha!; to China just not willing to lose face.
Not many of those reasons make sense now. China is not run by idiots. It's clear as the day the rest of the World looks down on them for this at the time of writing this. And covid wasn't that bad. So what gives?
Are they that high on their own supply?
Almost every country in the world had leaders powerful enough, and power-hungry enough, to do these sorts of restrictions in 2020 and 2021. Even now-former liberal democracies did them. So I don't think China's policy here has any different motivations. It's just more of the same.
A criticism often levied at The Cathedral. GDP can only save you so much from cutting your own dick off.
Real life is not a 4x, where making your civilians stronger inherently makes you stronger. Rather, Xi (and other leaders) can gain power even as the people they rule over grow poorer. And, ultimately, that is what motivates most of them.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
I am 100% fine calling 10 businesses in my state to suggest the boycott and calling 5 corporations to complain, and I’m extremely lazy. I am ready to loudly and annoyingly protest outside certain businesses to discourage patrons.
You aren't meaningfully allowed to do these steps. If it's not illegal, it will soon be made so. At least, that's the pattern for the UK.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
From my reading of the literature:
Most comorbidities don't amount to much compared to just age + being male. There's no way to give a young person enough comorbidities to make them at high risk as an old person without also making them instantly die from their comorbidities. You'd need to be a quintuple amputee with stage 11 cancer and multiple organ failure. Governments incorrectly communicated the risk of comorbidities and never rescinded this communication (and also never properly communicated the sheer impact age has), resulting in plenty of 20 year olds with asthma thinking they're more likely to die than their grandparents.
Chance of dying from OG covid correlates pretty much 1:1 with your chance of dying in the next year once you are over 30. Below 30, this pattern doesn't hold, as teens and 20-somethings have a bump of risk of dying from suicide/violence/vehicles and under-5s have infant mortality effects despite being unaffected by covid.
The average age of covid deaths, and life expectancy tables, come together to yield a result that the average person who died from covid probably had 7 years left to live. Eyeball-tier adjustments for how the average person who dies of covid is frailer than the average person of the same age probably reduces this to ~4 years. This doesn't sound good for lockdowns as it means, in a circumstance where as much as 1% of the population die from covid, that's still only two weeks lost per person. Does not bode well for stealing multiple months away with lockdowns.
However, our counting system for covid deaths introduces all kinds of oddities, because the more ill you are, the greater the chance of you incidentally dying shortly after catching covid even if covid plays no role in it. There's a double whammy when you add in nosocomial infections. In the UK, there have been periods where it is likely that as many as 50% of recorded deaths are incidental, simply as a by-product of the number of positive tests * the chance of dying in any random 28 day period.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
I've also seen suggestions that Kurvitz et al believe that Tütreke, Kender etc. are planning to compromise their vision specifically for upcoming Amazon Disco Elysium series, presumably so that the political (anti-capitalist - Kurvitz is a self-described communist, very much a rarity in Estonia) aspect of their work would be compromised.
For Amazon? No. Why would they need to do that? The average Amazon staff member is probably far, far more favourable to communism than the average Estonian. I'd imagine being an Estonian Communist in Estonia in 2022 makes you about as popular as being a Jewish Nazi in Germany in 2022. If not worse due to the way Russia is, once again, engaged in imperialist expansion in Eastern Europe.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Most Mexican food is very obscure in the UK. US racial politics surrounding Mexico are even more obscure, especially with the standard audience for the Great British Bake Off being 50-something Brits watching TV in the evening, not Blue Tribe Americans. Even the idea of Hispanic as a distinct race will confuse the median (not terminally online) person on this side of the pond. It's an Americanism. Ask about it, and expect a response somewhere between "Huh? Isn't that something in America?" and "What do you mean Spanish people aren't white?"
Tophattingson
3yr ago
If it's only protesters that are righteous, and allowed to disrupt others for attention, then that still grants license for me to temporarily become a counter-protester and disruptively protest your protest by pushing you out the way.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
Take the convoy truckers; the COVID restrictions they were protesting against were almost all provincial (except the federal border restrictions, but we were just mirroring the US and even if we had struck ours down it wouldn't have made a difference). Yet it was the federal government and Trudeau who was the target of the protests. It's not like they were going to protest against the mainly conservative Premiers.
The federal government is responsible for foreign policy. Thus, going to Trudeau to demand he remove federal border restrictions and also negotiate their removal on the other side is actually the correct course of action.
According to slightly old polling data, only 62% of Republicans think Abortion should be illegal in either most or all cases. The Republicans have a big enough tent on abortion that they need to include people who support elective abortion in some capacity. Even if that inclusion is limited to just not advertising any specific policy.
Edit: To make an international comparison, the average European policy is within the Republican big tent (though the average European probably wouldn't realise or admit to this since international English media is very anti red tribe)
Tophattingson
3yr ago
who wears a mask to stave off the chance of smelling perfumes and cleaning fragrances.
The typical mask cannot block these. If you're not smelling them because you are wearing a mask, that's either because you are rebreathing your own exhaled air (bad) or mouthbreathing due to added mechanical difficulty of pushing air past the mask (also bad). On the rare occasions I have worn a mask, it is indeed the latter that happened. I noticed I couldn't smell things, and then noticed the reason why is that I started breathing through my mouth.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
The Democrats are definitely making this an abortion centered campaign, and the Republicans are trying to keep their heads down.
I wonder if there's a different asymmetry here.
It seems to me that, as part of increasing homogenization of what views are acceptable to hold while still being regarded as socially left-wing, the democrats are in a potentially advantageous position that they can campaign on yay abortion without having to further break down what yay means. Meanwhile, the republicans, who's social position is increasingly everything outside the narrow but concentrated window occupied by the democrats, have to hold together a coalition with as broad a range of views as safe, legal and rare, all the way to total prohibition in all circumstances.
It occurred to me that online it can be difficult to tell what district a viewer is in, so I guess you have to have a shotgun approach.
People being vaccinated imposes a cost on them. This cost varies from minor (risk related to the vaccine itself) to really quite substantial (the emotional consequences of being subjected to a medical treatment you do not want). We know some people place quite a high cost on them being vaccinated because of what they were willing to continue suffering in the presence of vaccine mandates. I don't see why demanding others be vaccinated shouldn't be treated as the negative externality, rather than remaining unvaccinated being the negative externality. Similarly, the implementation of vaccine mandates creates a negative externality, via the suffering of victims of vaccine mandates for the sake of either the health or emotional gratification of supporters of the mandate.
Tophattingson
3yr ago
and I don't find it unreasonable to impose a cost on individuals to the extent it can potentially mitigate negative externalities.
I find the idea of being unvaccinated creating an externality, and therefore receptive to externality-targeting policy, to be a very weak. Not specifically for covid, but in general for vaccines.
When calculating externalities, you need to set a reference point - externality relative to what. Generally, this reference point is set relative to doing nothing. For instance, when it comes to climate, we choose the reference point of no pollution, and therefore class polluters as inflicting a negative externality. If we instead, erroneously, set the reference point of yes pollution, we'd instead find that non-polluters are inflicting a positive externality. Opposite of consensus on how this is calculated. Since the default state of humans is to not be vaccinated, externalities need to be set relative to this. Because of this, the demand for someone else to be vaccinated creates the externality. I'm yet to see a rigorous explanation of why being unvaccinated is the negative externality, rather than demanding that others be vaccinated creating the negative externality.
To give an example this applied to a hypothetical situation of whether unvaccinated and vaccinated people should meet at a venue.
Nobody wants to be there: No externality.
Only one person wants to be there: No externality.
Both people want to be there: No externality.
Both people want to be there but one of the two insists the other be vaccinated: Externality, as they impose a cost of being vaccinated on someone, while reaping all the (hypothetical) reward of supposedly lower chance of being infected.
Besides, vaccine mandates are not vaccinations. As in, the policy of a vaccine mandate doesn't vaccinate people. It merely punishes them for being unvaccinated. The standard justification for externality-targeting policies is that they can resolve market failures where people impose costs on others for their own benefit, by redistributing both the costs and benefits. However, vaccine mandates don't have benefits to redistribute, they just have the costs of the loss of utility from harming unvaccinated people. Well, I guess you could get really nebulous and claim that e.g firing unvaccinated people redistributes wages to vaccinated people, or suggest that vaccinated people emotionally benefit from seeing unvaccinated people be needlessly harmed, but that's not what any advocate of vaccine mandates claims to want.
Further, if we're doing a full accounting of covid-related externalities, we should do it evenly. Advocates of lockdowns and other restrictions reaped all the rewards (emotional, health risk etc) while imposing costs on me (emotional, health risk etc). This is unfair. I've seen people crunch the numbers on how much being unvaccinated "costs" to healthcare. It's about $1k for the average person, which is way way lower than a lot of other voluntary activities that are considered sacrosanct to restrict, but whatever. Great. I'll gladly pay that amount, provided I am compensated for all the other externalities. I expect to massively benefit from this arrangement overall. The chance of me being hospitalized with covid is negligible. The financial damage of restrictions, once you sum up years of lost income, QALY losses, increased taxes, increased cost of living due to inflation, the loss of government services etc, will come in at well over $100k.
Because the relevant parts form from the same cells and then differentiate later in pregnancy, they each have analogous equivalents in the opposite sex. Testes and ovaries develop from the same tissue. The clitoris develops from the same tissue that forms the glans and shaft of the penis. This is why there are no intersex people born with both sets of reproductive systems being fully functional. I don't see any reason to think these hook up to the brain differently enough to matter.
Besides, the tool-using speciality of the human brain is surprising adept at treating new additions as an appendage of the self. Not that present technology can do this, but I see nothing preventing e.g. a robo-cock sending the right feedback to the brain to become recognised as part of the self.
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