ODILON_SATER

Kids staying at home, in overly sanitized environments, and socializing much less with other children. Their immune systems don't get "trained" as much. Not saying that you should let your child lick public restrooms knobs. But there is a balance. It is called the "Hygiene Hypothesis". I think it was niche idea a while ago but I think it is pretty much accepted now.

Gifted programs as we know, are basically advanced programs for shape-rotators, which closely relates to IQ.

The IQ distribution is different across race groups, therefore you expect to have more representation of certain groups relative to others.

It's obvious that Asians --I am not Asian-- perform extremely well in IQ tests compared to other groups. Same with Ashkenazi Jews. These groups would have, relatively speaking, a higher representation. It would also be more male than your typical classroom.

Just like we have "physically gifted programs" in sports, and in some Blacks are overly represented. People don't seem to bat an eye for such "inequity", because it is understood that, on average, Blacks have superior athletic ability in some sports.

People really have a hard time understanding basic statistical facts, and they take these things personally. When we compare average heights across countries, nobody gets offended because everybody is aware of their own height. A 6'4 American is just as tall as a 6'4 Indonesian, so people don't take personally. Somehow average IQ is this thing that people take personally as if it was an indictment on their intelligence.

Besides, there is much more than IQ. Plenty of people with average IQs are successful. Sure, the premium on IQ increased in our society, but there is so much variance in activities and other inherent or acquired characteristics, it is really not that big of a deal.

With that being said, it is important for a nation to identify exceptional talents --including intelligence-- and nurture these individuals so they maximize their potential. It's good for them, it's good for society as well. Recognizing that people should have different educational experiences is the right thing to do.

Also keep an eye on the rise of auto-immune diseases in the following years. Two years of lockdown will give rise to a lot more children developing peanut allergies, asthma, hay fever, diabetes type 1, etc.

Why are software companies lobbying for their products and politicians wanting to establish a larger surveillance state mutually exclusive?

Check out EWG's sunscreen list, it rates sunscreens based on toxicity and UV protection.

https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/

They rate most products found in North America. It is my go-to resource for sunscreens

An example is the complete unnecessary cast of Caroline Henderson (a black woman) to the series "Vikings: Valhalla". I understand it is a fictional story, but these are Vikings for pete's sake. The only reason they cast her was evidently for diversity reasons. It is a distraction to the story, I immediately turned off. Though we know that not all vikings had blonde hair, some may be even a bit more dark skinned, but definitely not black. And it is more laughable because she's a character that yields some power in the Viking society. Laughable and a distraction to the story.

Another example of a series that, instead of focusing on its central theme, ends up injecting politically-motivated content is the series "High Score". Listen, I understand that a small portion of early video game enthusiasts care about those things, but for a series that has a purpose to tell the relevant stories about creation and development of video games in the 80s and 90s, you just can't help but to think that they felt that they needed to inject some LGBT content in it such as in episode 3 on the story about the 1st LGBT RPG game GayBlade. They end up leaving more relevant content on the table to shoehorn these themes into the series. Not everything needs to be "gay", or having a "gay angle".

`- there is too much political agenda sold even in children shows (Kids really dont need this kind of crap)`

This is what pushing me over the edge. I have both Netflix and Amazon prime subscriptions. I have thought several times to drop one. The only reason I still have Netflix is because my wife and kids watch their shows. But I have had a hard time finding good shows because everything is political, and I hate when the trailer deceives me and they just inject pure political propaganda in the middle of the show.

Suddenly I found myself reading about Synology NAS and how to set up Plex on it. I am very close to buy a Synology NAS, and to boot I can get host my own VPN server, seems like a good idea.

> When Miami and Houston go underwater, a16z will be partly responsible.

Not a climate change denier, but do people seriously believe these events will happen soon? Even if these models are right on ocean levels raising, you have to believe that humans would find a way to engineer a solution to keep these cities afloat so to speak.

> Actually, we generally don't even know the real rate of myocarditis in the general population. It's relatively common that someone is admitted to the hospital for another symptom and myocarditis is diagnosed, without the patient even noticing.

Yes, but wouldn't we expect this to apply to both groups at the roughly same rate?

> As for females, for any age, there is zero statistically significant result for myocarditis included to the vaccine, at all. So for all we know, the vaccine may cause zero myocarditis in females. It's almost certain that further stratification would help.

This is not true according to the pre-print (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...), page 10. In fact, it shows that Moderna's second dose is associated with higher incidence rate against baseline. Though if we compare with post-covid, there is an overlap in the 95% CI --though IRR for 2nd dose Moderna is higher.

> The reason why there was not anymore stratification is because myocarditis due to the vaccine is so rare that if you do stratify it, you cannot come to any conclusion.

Fair point. Yes, certainly further stratification would lead to a loss in statistical power and making the point estimates meaningless, but it would be nice to see it in case there is still some point estimates that show statistically significant results because I suspect that the risk of myocarditis goes up inversely with age.

I have seen many people arguing for the vaccines as an effective treatment whilst defending people's choice to refuse the vaccine. Though I got vaccinated, I was surely forced to do so else I would've lost my job, but I delayed as much as I could. However, I was very clear to advise my parents (in their late 60s) to be the first in lie to take the vaccine because I knew the risks associated with COVID far outweighed any risk associated with the vaccine. And I know of many people with similar views, though they apply to a different age group, like many parents not wanting to vaccinate their children because they understand how rare of a event is death from covid for a healthy kid.

I don't know. I feel that many people got unfairly labelled as "anti-vaxxer" because they simply opposed to forced vaccination --not the efficacy of the vaccine itself, based on the argument that risk of death from covid was relatively very low for healthy adults and children. And given the time constrains for the vaccine production and trials, it would have been prudent to assume that the side effects associated with the vaccines would not be fully revealed in time.

I believe the right move would've been to let people decide, especially after became clear that vaccination did not protect against infection in the medium run with Israel data being abundantly clear already in late spring of this year. I still believe vaccination rates amongst the old would have been extremely high, protecting those who are at-risk the most. I saw this happening in countries like Brazil, old people rushed to take the jab despite no clear mandates in the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign --although a lot of people got the Sinovac which are not as effective as Pfizer or Moderna.

> This preprint agrees that the risk of myocarditis is significantly higher, except if you are a. A male b. Under 40 years old c. Took the Moderna vaccine

A few things to consider, the paper's calculated myocarditis risk post covid is overestimated as it is impossible to know how many people actually caught the virus. It is reasonable to assume that the actual delta (risk myocarditis post vax vs risk myocarditis post covid) is actually larger, I believe this is just the tip of the icerberg.

Also, the bit about Males only. Pretty sure if you stratified the population even further, you'd find that young females are also at a significantly higher risk of myocarditis for vax vs post covid. As some mentioned here, it would be nice if the age intervals were a bit more stratified.

Who's to say that the person who harbored this mutation wasn't vaccinated? The only thing we know is that they suspect it developed in an individual with HIV.

That's a fair take actually

You are correct.

To be honest, I am not a huge fan of hedge funds either. But in this specific case, I'd rather take their advice. In my opinion, for this specific case --discussing inflation trends--, I don't see a lot of room for hedge funds to be partisan? No new legislation, no wrinkles in the system, etc. And they may be wrong, and Krugman may be right after all. Economics, especially Macroeconomics forecasting analysis, should be treated with some reservation. I just find the particular post quite convincing given what I've observed in the last few months.

Krugman does not have a nobel prize in the subject. Krugman's nobel prize is in another area in Economics, not monetary policy. His contributions are mainly in trade, which were very important no doubt. But it doesn't make him an expert on monetary policy and inflation. I understand that Economics may look like a single-blob to outsiders, but Economics has a wide range of topics and sometimes they barely intersect.

What evidence do you need? It's been already spelled out. High demand coupled with lagging supply, which does not have the capacity to adjust to new behaviors in the short and medium run. Especially if you consider the regulatory barriers, such as ramping up energy production. What little evidence do you speak of?

There is no increase in productivity.

Inflation can be very costly, especially for the most disadvantaged who do not have investments to hedge against the rise in prices. It may have a positive first order effect in the short run, but it is an elusive one.

Inflation, if out of control, has the potential to bring the interest rate to levels that would turn borrowing extremely costly --therefore making acquisition of capital more expensive, affecting productivity.

Another side effect is that the government debt could become extremely burdensome, which would force the government to essentially print money to pay its debts. That is effectively a tax (called _seignorage_) on the population. In order to pay its debts, the government prints money, which in turn makes goods and services more expensive --i.e. _seignorage_. High inflation can affect consumer behavior and depress economic activity, which would lead to unemployment, it happened many times, and it is called stagflation. A slower economic activity coupled with increase in prices could then make production more costly, which would push inflation even higher but also increase unemployment.

The key here is whether inflation would get out of control. The Fed seems to banking on the idea that this high inflation is transitory, which means that despite its current high levels, there will be some accommodation in the medium run and things would go back to a stable and acceptable target level. Some, like the article above, does not think so. If that's the case, then the Fed will need to act soon.

Claudia Sahm? Krugman? I rather listen to the hedge fund guys, at least they have skin in the game, don't they? Claudia Sahm is extremely partisan, and so is Krugman. You know it's going to be bad when we are starting to hear from the media that inflation is actually a good thing --because people have more disposable income to spend on things. First, it was just a blip, then they told us it would go away in half a year, now it is here to stay --but it is a good thing, see?

The reality is that the explosive demand, alongside with a lagging supply can lead to an inflationary pressure not seen since the 1970s. At least in the 70s the information technology revolution was just around the corner. Right now, it feels like the supply issue cannot be remedied or solved because of heavy regulations and a stagnant productivity.

I would recommend this small article by economist John Cochrane <a href="https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2021/10/supply.html">http.... The corporate media in general is very quick on this one calling it a transitory inflation. I am not sure that's case. We may be in for a bad stretch. Supply-side inflation can be very damaging and hard to fix, especially when the government is pushing a stimulus bill that, not only does not address the issue, it will potentially make it worse by throwing even more sand in the gears of the supply chain. People should plan accordingly.

It just that it is more likely that founders genuinely care about their baby, so they have more incentive to make the company more resilient to long term risks. I don't think this is an absurd claim. It's not that every founder is the same, there are founders who behave just like most CEOs.

I've been using Vivaldi for over a year and I am very happy with it. To the point that I find FF inferior when I use it on my old linux machine. I love the customization offered.

Thank you for the product

They always bring the kids when they want to control the flow of information. Don't fall for it. She is clearly planted, voluntarily or involuntarily.

thanks!

thanks!

Speaking of mobile OS. I am a bit of a newbie myself in this area. I am an Android user but I want to decouple from Google as much as possible. Is there an mobile OS out there that offers a similar experience to, say, Android in terms of functionalities, apps, etc without the drawback of privacy concerns?

This is a terrible idea. A lot of people are failing to realize that this is a bad precedent.

Even though the article spends most of the time talking about an example orthogonal to politics, it is clear that politics will be the main topic of this course. I have zero faith in the system to show the numerous examples of bad articles by the NYT, WP, NPR... anybody remembers the Covington kid?

The issue goes beyond self criticism of course. The state should not play a role in telling kids what they should or shouldn't read as a news source - because that's what will end up happen. I have zero faith that such class will actually engage in fruitful debates.