domain:streamable.com
jkf
1hr ago
I'm still not 100% convinced that the antigenic imprinting thing didn't transpire with the vaccines -- I've had it exactly once, during the Omicron wave, and don't seem to get it anymore despite the odd known exposure. Which is stark contrast with my (largely rabid vaccine fan) coworkers, who seem to be down with it all winter and still complain about side effects from booster shots.
Granted it's not putting them in the hospital or anything, but they do seem to be uniformly pretty damn sick for several days everytime -- which is worse than my initial natural exposure. Unlikely to get a good study on it, but if anything it seems like kind of the opposite of herd immunity -- I always thought that this was one of the more plausible reasons not to take the vaccine, so I get a nice glow of smugness everytime somebody calls in saying "OMG I can't even move, see you next week".
LateMechanic
1hr ago
There's a clear different memetic impact depending on whether people mentally bucketed covid as 'a new potentially-deadly virus' or 'a new strain of the flu', so that was always an important territory to fight over.
AvocadoPanic
1hr ago
The execution of the Duc d’Enghien was used to further the proximate goal of deterring royalist opposition and consolidating Napoleon’s power, much like COVID data obfuscation was used to justify policies by amplifying risk-severity. Both achieved short-term goals—suppressing dissent or driving compliance.
Both are 'mistakes' that appear to have met their indended near-term goals? Nearly all current year politics eschews the long term.
While you quote an enduring witicism I have difficulty finding an error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness, a misconception or misunderstanding, in either. Traditional markers of mistakes.
That trust in institutions may now be diminished, is only a result of the 'mistake' if the trust had been warrented or well-placed before. The 'mistake' is that the public trusted them to begin with.
orthoxerox
If you can read this, you're using a custom theme
1hr ago
Ugh, I saw a girl in the gym doing deadlifts and she was shaped like a question mark when pulling. What's worse, her personal trainer was right next to her and didn't give a damn.
JarJarJedi
1hr ago
Well, if you target the cultural elites, the narrative "racists tried to ethnically cleanse my people" gets you lots of sympathy, but the narrative "commies murdered 5 millions of my people while trying to establish the worker's paradise" gets you shrugs and "well, you can't build worker's paradise without breaking some eggs...". So it's hard to fault them for playing with the deck they've been dealt.
desolation
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1hr ago
…and it does follow that we should probably treat gain-of-function research as if it had caused COVID, because "we can't ever know for certain if it caused COVID, but the two hypotheses are neck-to-neck" is bad enough if we're talking about future caution.
That's a fair conclusion, but not really Scott's conclusion, and I have to wonder what the underlying motivation is to be so committed that lab leak is wrong when there's more interesting topics to discuss around COVID.
desolation
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
1hr ago
Flu is almost always symptomatically indistinguishable from COVID
My theory is that it was much more widespread in the US than anyone admitted because testing was constrained early on, and a lot of first-wave cases got called flu with no further diagnostics.
Botond173
1hr ago
Americans are very focused on ethnic dimensions of the conflict due to their history but that was more of a class/power conflict than the ethnic one.
True. But it weren't Americans who invented the ethnicist narrative that has been mainstreamed in the West, it was Ukrainian nationalist immigrant activists in America, Canada, the UK etc.
ThenElection
1hr ago
LLMs generate gossip and tabloid drama about real celebrities; they wouldn't have any issues doing the same about AI-generated celebrities.
It will be a gradual process: first generating all the extras; then improving the real performances of real actors; then generated performances of dead actors; then licensed generated performances of live main actors; and then entirely generated main actors. And it won't be admitted at first. But having a reliable actor who always turns up sober and on time, looks like and does what exactly you want them to, has no time constraints, and doesn't take a substantial cut of the profits is a massive pull.
And if audiences insist on being sold a real life backstory about the actors to form parasocial relationships with them, well, Hollywood will be happy to generate and sell that to them too.
Rov_Scam
1hr ago
I remember reading an article at the time that said much of the confusion was due to the process used to investigate COVID deaths. Since all COVID cases were being reported to the health department at the time, any death with COVID was reported as a suspected COVID death, keeping in mind that all the health department knew initially was that a. The person had COVID and b. The person died. Since it takes a couple weeks for a death certificate to be issued, stories would come out of someone dying in a car crash who was on the COVID death list. But once the health department had the death certificate, they would then exclude anyone for whom COVID wasn't a contributing factor in their death.
It should be mentioned that the opposite happened, as well. There was a guy out by Philadelphia who crashed his car, was taken to the hospital, and died. He tested positive in the hospital, and was listed as having died from COVID, which cased a minor outrage for being so obviously the "guy who dies in a car accident tests positive and gets counted as a COVID death". Except in this case, they were right, but for the wrong reasons. The guy was sick with COVID, and the accident was actually caused because he lost control of his car after getting into a coughing fit. His injuries from the accident weren't life threatening, and he died of COVID at the hospital. In other words, he died with car accident.
faceh
2hr ago
Or the immortality of said celebs.
If they can keep casting well-liked actors in films via AI, even after they'd dead or retired, they're going to do it.
I do wonder, as with AI-Generated music, which is ACTUALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE these days, if one major reason people will still prefer 'real' artists is simply because they want to personally meet them or be able to experience them live, so they'll eventually shun the AI stuff not specifically because they know it is AI, but because there's no personal life/gossip/tabloid drama to follow, and they want to physically touch the person at some point.
faceh
2hr ago
Its not that 'absolutely nothing' has happened, but more that every advance has been marginal, so even if you follow ALL the best advice, you're getting an extra 10-15% of extra lifespan at best.
If you want to see the absolute extreme limit of human longevity science, follow Bryan Johnson.
HorthyMiklosKatonaja
2hr ago
Optimus robot
Musk is famous for overpromising and excessively-optimistic timelines. He's basically the Peter Molyneux of tech. I wouldn't take anything he says seriously, unless we see the robot performing household tasks with proof that there isn't someone operating it like a waldo.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2hr ago
Agreed. Imagineering is not a joke.. Nvidia-Disney will have the most expressive robots in different varieties of your favorite characters. Tesla won't stand a chance in the marketing.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
Yes, I remember seeing people spray down their shoes with disinfectant when returning to the house. Or spraying down the table at a shared eating space (because what we really needed is a bunch of people touching the same squirter, squirting down their tape-demarcated part of the table).
There was a shocking level of hysteria.
Mantergeistmann
2hr ago
It also didn't help that most pandemic plans were for "high fatality, moderate infectiousness" diseases rather than "low-except-for-elderly fatality, very high infectiousness." The playbooks got thrown out very early.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2hr ago
Three South African courts have ruled against attempts to have it designated as hate speech, on the basis that it is a historical liberation chant, not a literal incitement to violence.
Who cares what a South African court thinks? They haven't been covering themselves in excellence in upholding a stable, successful society. The murder rate there is comparable to the death rate in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
It's also somewhat hard to accept rhetorically, given how 'It's OK to be white' produced such a big storm.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2hr ago
May BJJ Notes
— My facial stitches pretty much healed up, and as soon as I got them out I was back on the mats. There’s the start of a nice little traditional German dueling scar on my lip, but luckily it happened after I got married, so I have very little need to look pretty anymore. I am, if I”m honest, deeply embarrassed by all the outpourings of affection from the other members at the gym. I considered the whole matter vaguely shameful and stupid; everyone is way too nice about it, going out of their way to ask me how I’m doing when I come in to the gym. I guess the pictures coach posted to the gym group chat when I got injured were pretty amusing, me smiling with my face slashed open. The scar seems to be healing up fine, my only real concern is making sure it doesn’t reopen or become a weak point that could reopen easily in the future, which I think is a thing but I’m really not entirely sure? I was too nervous to shave while the stitches were in or freshly out, so I grew the worst beard of my life while all this was going on.
— My buddy talked me into signing up together for private classes with the head coach, once a week in the mornings. The classes themselves are good fun, but the biggest revelation so far is that I understand the entire business model of the gym much better than I did before. Up until now I’d really wondered at how they offered such a good deal: I pay a little under $150/mo for unlimited classes, which are offered for adults 15 times per week with about a dozen instructors, and range in attendance from just me and maybe another guy to 30+ people. It seemed to me like a great deal for me personally, but a tough business to run even with the cash cow of kids classes and at any gym constant supply of people who sign up and never attend. At the same time, while BJJ pedagogy is a whole fucking category of debate I don’t want to get too far into, while I was pretty satisfied with my rate of improvement I did notice that the classes weren’t necessarily structured optimally for learning. Then I signed up for the 2:1 private classes, which on a per-hour basis run $60, and a lot of things made sense. Turns out they book a ton of private classes, with a lot of people who I didn’t realize were booking private classes; where initially I thought of the standard classes as the main thing, and the privates as an incredibly fancy add-on which maybe a dozen people who were really rich or really serious might book, turns out the public classes are the budget tier and the private classes are premium DLC that probably 30-40% of the students are booking. Cynically, it almost feels like the gaps in the pedagogy are intentional to sell privates, by working on a semi-random assortment of moves in the public classes and then gating those fundamentals behind additional cost you sell your product. Given, I don’t begrudge them that, the public classes are a real deal, part of the reason I was talked into signing up for the privates was because I didn’t mind putting some money in the coaches’ pockets it’s still not an easy business. And while now I’m happy to pay extra and show up at 6am for a private class where we just drill precise details on the armbar, the public class format was way more engaging for me early on because I got to jump right into learning a move and rolling with it, even if as a result I only half learned the move. Swings and roundabouts.
— The biggest thing I think I need to work on to improve at this point is mindset. Pretty predictable if you knew me, I lack some level of necessary killer instinct. Hell, it’s a problem I have as a mechanic, that pretty often I’m unwilling to be hard enough on the machine to get a bolt loose or a clip out for fear of breaking something. I tend to categorize too many of my partners at the gym as either way better than me, so that I’m trying not to lose too badly and unwilling to be rough with them when they’re being kind to me by going easy; or as way worse or weaker/smaller than me and hence I don’t want to go too rough and be a dick to them. Part of this is a sense that I’m a big strong guy, even in the context of the gym, and I don’t want to have the rep as a big dumb moose that spazzes out and hurts people. But sometimes I get the distinct sense I’m stuck at 75% effort, and that if I could just get out of second gear I could start beating some of the guys I think are better than me. I’m thinking maybe the solution is hitting up more open mats at other gyms, so I’m a bit more shuffled. I’m reasonably pleased with my progress in defense, guard retention, and lately I’ve been having some luck with sweeps and guard passes. But I can’t seem to get finishes, and at times I feel like I’m just stalling in the round maintaining mount or side control without getting the finish.
— In the weight room, my Philadelphia Eagles posted a hype video of the guys doing back squats in the offseason. Among monsters like Jordan Mailata and Saquon hitting 6 plates, Grant Calcaterra came in and hit 405. My first reaction was: poor Grant, why did they have to do him like that? He seems so weak compared to the rest of the players! My second thought was: that’s not far past my PR in back squat, and really close to my implied PR from reps, with a little effort I could say I back squatted as much as an Eagles Tight End! So I’m trying to get back under the bar for a couple months after this weekend, when…
— Murph is coming, and I’m gonna fucking die. I’m doing it with the vest, because it doesn’t really slow me down all that much, just makes everything suck more. But the gym guys I'm doing it with ALSO announced a special 6am class beforehand, so I'm gonna die. Will report back if I’m alive.
Is it a 'mistake', if it's designed to obfuscate and mislead?
Sure. The phrase 'it was worse than a crime; it was a mistake' comes to mind.
I am all on board that acts and/or policies can both be morally wrong and mistakes in the sense that they do not achieve the ends they were taken to achieve.
Going by Fauci's public statements for why he changed various positions over the course of the pandemic to 'nudge' people into 'better' options, I am fully prepared to believe he was both a bad actor and that he believed doing so would provide a net good on the pandemic outcome.
I think he was generally incompetent in that regards, as I do most people who believe national policy-level lies to be 'white lies' with no bearing on later credibility. I even say this as someone who has a far greater degree of acceptance of state secrets and such than others- part of public credibility is that you need a public's buy in to recognize that you might not share all information, but that what you do share needs to be fundamentally honest/accurate. Failures to maintain this are what lose the trust of those willing to extend tolerance to withholding 'true' information. Fauci's (and other's) technocratic approach to professional credibility is part of why I find him incompetent- he behaved as if the legitimacy and public trust derived from his position, rather than was bestowed by the public he tried to obfuscate and mislead.
People- individually and collectively- have some tolerance for O&M. But it is narrowed, and subject to revocation if abused.
Hieronymus
2hr ago
I am not a libertarian, and I am certainly no ancap. I have some very strong classical liberal leanings, but classical liberalism is not the summum bonum.
The family, as a classic example of natural duty, is one of the great weaknesses of a thoroughgoing, non-agression-principle–centered libertarianism. Libertarianism in its heart of hearts wants to divide the world into free agents and property; children are neither. They are both human and inescapably dependent. It is baked into the order of creation, and no one can will it away. They are not the only example, but they are by far the clearest.
AvocadoPanic
2hr ago
worse policy mistakes
Is it a 'mistake', if it's designed to obfuscate and mislead?
That the same bad actors then use their obfuscation for
justifying later (bad) policies on the basis of risk-severity
I have difficulty seeing these as 'mistakes'.
Wasn't their a rhyming obfuscation with the vaccinated? You did not count as vaccinated and dead unless you died > 2 weeks after your vaccination?
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 'We have a golden rule: "Mind your own damn business!"'🍞🌹
2hr ago
My white, Evangelical, smoking and drinking are sins circle faired very well.
I think this part should be hyphenated, as otherwise it becomes a garden-path sentence.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
3hr ago
What we needed were expedited Challenge Trials. The first thing I thought was ridiculous is how the virus was dangerous enough that it made sense to shut down everything, but not so important that we could do challenge trials for treatments on volunteers. I know many people who would have willingly been exposed to the virus to test out a treatment/vaccine.
A challenge trail would have shut down a lot of this vaccine effectiveness debate. Isolate a group of 400 people, vaccinate half, expose half of each group to the virus, and record the data. Hard to argue with that, fast results, save a million lives.
AvocadoPanic
3hr ago
Or name them after monkeys because of homosexuals?
Then rephrase it. People can come up with conclusions about whether God's acts are consistent with his supposed nature. In that sense, yes, they can hold God accountable, even if they aren't able to punish God.
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