99 karma · joined December 9, 2021
Not only did the measures not work, they were doomed to fail from the start and could not have possibly worked.
You've provided little more than your own disagreement, but no supporting arguments as to why.
Political leaders and authorities knew this, but acted in the ways that they did for their own reasons. My position here puts me at odds with political partisans, but not scientists.
It was never tenable.
>>It was proof that lockdowns and masks could have ended the pandemic
Research in January of 2020 indicated that the virus was known to species hop with ease.
Research also indicated there was ample evidence of animal population reservoirs of virus.
Thus, any lockdown of human populations, even quarantining us to different planets, would be irrelevant. Animal populations would function as reservoirs that will bring the virus back to a stage of infecting us as soon as we come out of hiding.
>>if they had been implemented rigorously and early enough.
This is a completely bonkers view point (as it has no basis in science) and it is sadly the view of many people who have been conditioned to believe authority figures are infallible.
>> irritating things is that a lot of people who now claim mask mandates and lockdowns don't work were also the people who were sabotaging them, and they failed in large part because of that sabotage.
The virus is airborne. It travels between 27-42 feet in the air. Proper PPE in the quantities needed does not exist.
Social distancing at 6 feet? Pseudoscientific recommendation coming from pre-covid infection control practices designed to prevent the spread of influenza droplets (which are known to travel less than six feet).
Paper masks? Cloth masks? Pseudoscientific recommendation coming from a government wanting to be percieved as doing something. Every professional knows none of that gear is rated or known to stop viral transmission. Even a properly used N95 has a very short lifespan proportionate to the electric charge on the cloth material (which can fade after minutes of use, at which point, when the charged sides of the mask lose their charge, the filtration of viral particles ends despite the masks bulkier size).
>>Locking people in their homes, welding them into prisons, shooting people who violate curfew? etc??
Draconian, pseudoscientific shit that has no place in any society or civilization. It also didn't work.
In all societies, regardless of these pseudoscientific measures being implemented or not, the virus still spread.
I guess you can use the virus as fuel for your hatred of some political adversary and scapegoat them for the virus. Apes and authoritarians have been doing that for all of human history with many different viruses.
>> About me?
Come from a family of doctors. Ran a team at a viral research lab in a very relevant country. Have done graduate study in virology. Have attended various infection control and pandemic response seminars prior to the pandemic. Have dealt with SARS and MERS in person prior to covid.
I, like many others, have had these positions since January 2020. Educated professionals who talk of facts are constantly silenced or bullied or threatened by authoritarian systems.
I do not matter and my background does not give my comments merit. The comments more or less stand on their own.
I, like many others, refrain from speaking on the subject because commentary is illegal and my family could be persecuted for my discussing it.
I will instead say that I believe your view is incredibly naive and you are fortunate to have your naivety be legal to voice.
Read between the lines here and understand that I believe there is a lot to say that cannot be said.
I think the best approach going forward is: (1) increased capacity at hospitals, (2) a generalized reduction in crowded events, and (3) improvements to all indoor ventilation systems.
I am blown away by this belief of yours. Crypto is basically a scam.
The western world is never going back to the post-USSR high it was enjoying. Ever. The competitors have awakened and are making their moves globally. Most westerners are asleep.
The collective masses are always a bit arrogant in their praise of existing dogma.
So naturally, every correct answer would be controversial in the present.
The truth eventually wins. It is no soy for my family.
In China for example, tofu is one of the cheapest possible protein sources (think in terms of a massive pallet of it sold for five dollars) but people are generally aware that it is poisonous in some weird ways that won't kill you. Males are generally urged not to consume it.
This could be a knowledge of just the upper class, though. An unspoken suggestion to leave the tofu and soy for the poor.
It would not surprise me in the least if their state was behind the SN pseudonym.
Also... SN could have used any news article from any publication discussing the bailouts -- they made a choice to use a page with a massive graphic of Israeli tanks rolling into territory, rather than, say, any page from a more financially focused paper like WSJ... This could be just noise or it could be there as some form of nationalism or affinity for the image and storey.
The genesis block contains a huge front page news storey of Israeli tanks rolling into Gaza, images and all, put there by Satoshi themself.
I was mostly describing my feelings and guesses of it.
Mobile platforms benefit more from high contrast, very simple and flat designs.
Beyond just the touch screen convenience features -- A significant portion of users is seeig their UI under conditions of extreme sunlight, water droplets, or cracked screen at any given time. These things all inform design choices for mobile.
Now then, why is Apple making the same mistake as Microsoft Windows 8 by forcing these design elements onto Desktop and Laptop market segments? Apple doesn't really think of the PC market much. According to their financial reports, they make more money selling chargers for their mobile devices than they do on the entire PC market.
The answer, I assume, is apathy.
I find these sorts of engagements interesting at the meta level.
I abstain from defending RMS, but it is amazing to me how damaging these moral crusades are. I wonder if my feelings currently are similar to those of the public audience during a witch trial. If the imaginary members of the audience stood up to say that the witchness is a bit absurd, they too would be accused of some relationship to dark magic, etc.
Don't you feel, to some extent, worried that by discussing Stallman's comments and their nuance, you yourself may one day be roasted in the same way the RMS is?
Its incredible.
I learned last night that Richard M. Stallman (RMS) has articles about him on Vice that are narrowly focused on some of his weighing in on the Epstein case.
While I cannot defend what RMS may have said just as I cannot defend what Schrodinger may have done, I still wish to highlight the absolute toxicity of taboo topics.
On the one hand: These sorts of things become the narrow fixation of moral crusaders who pursue their cause to the extremes.
On the other hand: Outsiders weighing in can be caught in the crossfire and find themselves cancelled by the crusade if they start asking questions or trying to discuss the wider meta of, "What defines this rule? Is it not possible that they are innocent? Does this rule help society? What of false positives?"
... As a result, outsiders know to avoid discussing the moral crusade or the rule for fear of being on the recieving end of the legacy destroying mob's righteous wrath.
We all self censor and avoid asking critical questions to improve our understandings of these events. We live in an age where the devil's advocate as well as the devil are both put on trial.
The experience of consuming media via an offline software is just infinitely better for my focus.
I would rather see Youtube die than Youtube-DL. Youtube-DL has a lot of use cases.
The issue I am trying to discuss is the comment sections which are being leveraged as an attack vector. In addition to that, there is the issue of attackers leveraging abstracted comment sections like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and even HackerNews.
The adversaries are everywhere. They are even embedded in tech companies under false identities.
Are you saying (1) "This update to the system's defenses would be circumvented by attackers using this alternative method."?
or are you saying, (2) "An easier solution is for the department of defense to inject their own commenters into the comment sections so that truth combats the noise our adversaries bombard us with."?
Replying to (1):
This suggestion of yours would involve foreign adversaries having to recruit Americans to be traitors in a way that is (A) easily tracked to their personal identity and (B) risks imprisonment.
It is true that they could try this method, but I doubt their success. Few people would betray their nation and community in such a transparent way.
That severely handicaps the efforts of our adversaries who are currently waging a war for the minds of some of our most vulnerable and unstable citizens.
Replying to (2): The DOD already does this. I know of several such operations of pretty cool levels of sophistication. I think the efforts are made with good intentions, but I think this whole effort falls short and doesnt stop the problem at the source. It also makes it so that comment sections everywhere appear "crazy" and enemy efforts still succeed from time to time at programming our citizens against the state.
A useful idiot (Russian term) programmed by an adversary to doubt the truth will often times see the government's sincere efforts to spread the truth as evidence that the government is corrupt. These idiots will seek refuge in news media ran by adversaries like RT dot com.
A useful idiot will also find themselves accused of being a foreign shill. By being accused of working for a foreign government while knowing they are just a normal citizen, these useful idiots immediately begin to believe that there are no foreign shills and that they are, in fact, all Americans who are being oppressed by a corrupt government. It is this state of "foreign programmed useful-idiocy" that renders an idiot to become a pawn to our adversaries who will then go around spreading anti-western civilization misinformation.
We should just prevent all of this outright, I think #2 is simply not enough.
I have long since held the opinion that blogs and online publishing would yield an avenue for foreign influence and cognitive attacks on our way of life.
For what it is worth, I do believe that the government and our intelligence agencies are fundamentally good and are staffed by mostly non-partisan, non-extremist patriots who I have tremendous respect for. We are, presently, a government for the people by the people and of the people.
I do, however, fear that our intelligence agencies and politicians exist with a high degree of arrogance derived from a faith in the superiority of our messaging. I share their faith that our way of life and methods of dealing with each other is superior to that of communist or authoritarian societies, but I do not share their same level of arrogance.
I am more inclined to think that the internet should be modified so as to ensure that the emergent dialogue, the emergent narrative of history and events, is one that came about naturally from our citizens speaking with one another.
For starters, comment sections should be siloed or firewalled nationally. Media entities of significance that wish to portray themselves as reputable news media should be required to have a registration with the government. Their comment sections should be limited to an anonymized walled-garden of citizens of our country only.
Removing foreign influence operatives from the comment sections of CNN, WashingtonPost, and Fox News would do a lot to heal the national divide and quell the brewing extremism.
I would go much further than that and would do tons of experiments if I was in charge of a department handling such a push at the government level. I think all of these troll attacks on our republic fall under the umbrella term "cognitive attacks" and I think it is time we make an effort to apply network security concepts to our national, internal dialogue.
Now, what is the selling point of a Pixel phone? They are designed to spy on and abuse their users by default. The entire business model is built around collecting data on you for sale to other parties. Phones are VERY personal, most people wouldn't even share their phone with a friend!
Maybe phones have just become too personal as a device? Maybe it is time to close the book on businesses like Google that ship shiny spyware where the utility features of a phone (messaging) is an afterthought...
I do believe the education system in America is designed to fulfill a few functions. The best interest of the children is not one of them.
The only people who can reasonably advocate for child welfare are parents, not teachers or politicians. Parents who take an interest in their children and attend school board meetings are being demonized. That should tell you all you need to know about the situation with schooling.
[Party B] followed the rules. [Party A] did not have sufficient votes to appoint a judge, and so no judge was appointed. [Party B] is under no obligation to assist [Party A].
>> They (Party B) then flipped those rules
[Party B] changed no rules. [Party B] had the votes to appoint a judge, and so a judge was appointed. [Party A] did not have sufficient votes to oppose it.
>>In 1918 he was asked by the mother of a brilliant German biology student to dissuade her son from joining the front in the First World War. Einstein complied and wrote: “Can this post of yours out there not be filled by an unimaginative average person of the type that come 12 to the dozen? Is it not more important than all that big scuffle out there that valuable people stay alive?”
>>And in 1922, Einstein told his close friend, the physicist Paul Ehrenfest, whose 4-year-old son had recently been diagnosed with Down syndrome, that he agreed with his decision to institutionalize his son rather than care for him himself, because “valuable people should not be sacrificed for causes without any prospects, not even in this case.”
Source: https://time.com/5314704/einstein-diaries-racism/
Einstein can be seen above quoted as saying things that are very similar to my own writings. Regardless, I just found this interesting today and thought you'd enjoy it.
Fun read and all.
Thanks for that link.
Very cool.
>>You seem to know very little about science
Einstein the person, the history of his life, etc are fully separate from contributions to science. Science is, generally, not about cults of personality, history, or any of that.
I have a great appreciation, respect, gratefulness, passion, and enthusiasm for science, progress, and advancement of the species.
One does not have to study the trivialities of how Einstein took his coffee or tea in 1938 in order to appreciate the genius and scientific contributions.
>>You
This side thread with you seems fallacious in a way, but that is okay. I respect you and think there is definitely a place in the world for people who do well in their careers and also worship their idols from history.
You know, all of that said, don't you think it would be cool and maybe beneficial to the species if cloning technologies were perfected and experiments were done where genes like those responsible for the entity you know as Einstein were cloned, given new names, new lives, and such? I wonder what would happen. It would seem such experiments are indeed coming in the future, and I do not think the historical trivialities of one's life have much to do with this scientific curiousity that many a biologist wants to explore.