forgotmyoldname

Flu shots are “updated” every year for new variants.

I might be wrong, but I think covid boosters so far are all just extra doses of the same old material. I don’t think anyone would get flu shots if we were expected to get 4 doses of the same thing with demonstrated lower efficacy.

I’m perfectly fine with getting boosters if they’re adjusted to be more effective against new strains. Getting a third, fourth, or fifth dose of the same old strain that’s basically been evolutionarily eliminated seems off to me.

Scrapple with a sprinkle of pepper and a drizzle of syrup is good eats. Fried up properly, it's basically a protein-filled hash brown.

Homework was several hours per night of busy work. I learned nothing from it. I spent that time teaching myself programming and things that were actually useful.

For tests, simply paying attention and listening to what the teacher said was enough to do well.

For many people, homework is completely useless and many US schools absolutely love overwhelming students with it. There are also kids who need to work jobs after work to support their family--busy work assignments are just punishment for them, and countless people I know suffered because of that. The ACT/SAT was a way for them to elevate themselves.

I didn’t go to Harvard, but I went to a decent university.

I was one of those students who got perfectly scores on all my tests but couldn’t possibly be bothered to do homework in high school, so my grades were less than perfect. If it weren’t for my high ACT score, I’m pretty confident I wouldn’t have been accepted into any university—especially as someone from a lower middle class family.

I’m not sure if eliminating standardized testing is a misguided effort to introduce fairness or a wisely guided effort to only let in the types they want through a more opaque process.

I think many people would upgrade from Windows 10 to 7 if they had the choice.

> But Reddit has repeatedly said that they will not depreciate old.reddit.com. They have zero reason to, as many of their powerusers rely on it.

Let’s be honest. Every company says this. Some actually try to stand by their statement. Public companies very often wipe those statements from existence because some MBA found a way to increase profits 27% this quarter (who cares if it the company borders on bankrupt in 2 years) or some intern found a way to double clicks.

If someone demonstrates that old Reddit results in fewer ad views, shutting it down is a matter of when and not if.

This depends on the school and town.

I went to a northern suburban public middle school and it basically felt like college. We were encouraged to explore our interests and there were classes catering to basically everything—loads of foreign languages, 3D art, wood shop (in 7th grade, not even high school), cooking, and so on. Few students acted out.

Then I moved to the south for high school. Want to continue learning the foreign language you’ve studied since 6th grade? Nope. We only offer that for upperclassmen because young students don’t have the mental maturity for language learning(what?). Want to explore art? Nope. You’re painting by numbers. Fights everyday. Straight up gangs and kids selling drugs when the teacher is looking away. Teachers chatting on the phone with friends all class everyday and just playing random movies unrelated to the subject.

My public education in middle school was far beyond what I got in high school. I’d dare say I regressed since I was doing less advanced subjects in high school. But my point is—great public schools exist. It’s all in where you live.

Not to be condescending, but because people have been saying for a year now or more now that the virus will rapidly evolve and any vaccines will become less effective over time because of it.

And the virus rapidly evolved and the vaccines we have became less effective to new strains, as expected. A quick deployment of vaccines would greatly reduce that risk (see: Japan currently having infections in the double digits following a rapid deployment in vaccines and universal masks, leaving little room for new strains to adapt).

The pandemic has been a long chain of some insightful people saying "This bad thing will happen if people don't take X precaution." People say that's a lie--then don't take X precautions. Bad thing happens. People get angry and say they were lied to because bad thing happened when they were told it wouldn't happen (because loads of people took no precautions). Then there's a warning about another bad thing happening, followed by denial.

Probably because a some churches will put a disproportionate amount of political rallying around banning something that Numbers 5:11-31 requires in some cases, but absolutely never mention marching or voting to feed the poor, help children, or other things.

Some undeniably do care about abortion. Some have financial ties to politics and abortion is the easiest wedge issue that they can claim to religiously justify.

Yeah, this is one of those things that everyone seems to know about, but when you ask Japanese people, most are like, “That’s a thing? Maybe I’ve seen it but probably not.”

There are… a lot of things like this, and I’m not sure why Japan is made out to be more mythical than most countries.

It's fine, but the first few episodes absolutely will not hook you. It's very bland and generic at first.

Countries would be wise to learn from The Netherlands and start building to protect their coastlines.

But most won't. We're just going to accept that the world's most populous cities will be underwater someday, some within a hundred years or so.

Some cars (including mine) have a seat that’s just one unified unit. No way to remove it.

> And our new forests tend to be more monocrop than the woodlands of old.

This is a huge problem.

When "reforesting", all too often the effort is just planting rows of evenly spaced out pine trees. Pine needles are decidedly less edible than soft leaves, and the piles of needles on the ground don't exactly provide a good environment for smaller plants to grow and certainly aren't a good home for insects. People are essentially planting green deserts.

We shouldn't. But low social mobility and further stratified wealth divisions is a sign that the effort is pointless for a growing number of people.

I mean, wars were fought over that and revolutions had. People decidedly did not like royalty, large so-wealthy-it's-hard-to-achieve groups, being so far above them. For a while, people much preferred knowing they could work hard or smart and make progress from the bottom to the top 20%.

We're talking about the top 20% here. Not the top 0.1%.

I mean... that doesn't detract from the problem at all. That just says there's a massive wealth divide and that moving up to the mere top 20% (the group 1 out of 5 people belong to) should be considered a ridiculous proposition unless you're born into it.

Why should 1 out of 5 people belong to a group so wealthy that saying mobility is difficult should be considered problematic?

You’d be surprised how many people don’t care what’s recommended for their needs, because they just want the strongest stuff imaginable. Particularly when they’re pissed off at pests.

There’s a good number of people who’d happily buy flying murder robots to blow rats up with missiles if they were readily available and affordable.

You’re really extrapolating a lot that I didn’t even come close to saying.

Sufficiently large companies are required to have a certain percent of their staff be CCP members making decisions. That also comes with money tied up in the company. That doesn’t mean every company is backed up by the government. You’re making wild straw men and getting enraged at your own argument.

Immigration is a bandaid on an internal injury. It makes you think you’ve helped the problem for now, but you’ve really done nothing.

Most of the countries that act as sources of immigrants are beginning their own population decline. Very soon there’ll be a slim number of countries with enough population to maintain their numbers while having enough to send abroad. Within about 50 years or so, that number will be approximately zero. When immigrants come to a country and adapt, their birth rates drop off pretty quickly as well. It’s a one, maybe two generation patch that slightly sustains numbers and that’s it.

Figuring out how to get people currently living in your country wanting to have kids is the real solution. At that point you can recruit skilled immigrants and not just play a numbers game to try to stay afloat. You also don’t need to think you’re entitled to the population of other countries to solve your own demographic crisis, like so many western countries do.

China literally does finance the companies. They’re required to have N% of their staff be CCP members once they reach a certain size.

It doesn’t mean companies are free to just lose money. It means they can take risks and not just milk immediate profits for stock gains.

>China - alleged communists - have outperformed the EU at creating a viable software industry.

If anything, this could be because of the communist aspect. Companies of a certain size become entwined with the government in China. Funding isn't really a concern when the state backs you up. Similarly, but without state support, the US has Silicon Valley investors who'll always throw cash at companies with the right connections and sometimes random people with decent business ideas.

Does the EU have anything similar to grow companies?

Length of time until death doesn’t mean a virus is less lethal.

Rabies effectively has a 100% death rate and it can take years for it to kick in. There are cases of people suddenly showing symptoms 5 years after initial exposure, and once that happens, your brain basically rapidly rots and you drop dead.

We have no clue what the long term effects of any covid variants are. We can only speculate.

Japan is currently implementing vaccine passports. Some towns already have registration and mine will soon.

Both should be regulated. Constant back and forth “x is worse” is why there’s been zero progress with plastics or CO2.

Neither of those were happening in that era.

They’re also as irrelevant as bringing up European colonial horrors or ongoing American foreign intervention.

Last weekend I was at a Japanese history museum, and part of the exhibit was on 1600s-1800s medical technology.

In the 1870s, Japan had vaccine passports and kept logs of unvaccinated people in order to track them down. It was deemed a huge step forward in developing the country.

It’s interesting how some people today think mandatory vaccination is some massive, unprecedented destruction of freedom, when it’s historically nothing new and something that was essential to helping your country stay strong.

Also a trend in making things increasingly less googleable.

iTunes->Music. Searching for issues with the application formerly known as iTunes is borderline impossible now.

Whoever approved that must’ve gotten an MBA from a top-ranked school, because any decent person would immediately recognize it as a bad idea.

And Kaiji and a few other manga/anime.

It’s not the first time this happened. Houses lose desirability due to jobs moving out of town, crime rising, and so on. Buying an overpriced house shouldn’t guarantee you a solid return in the future.

We’re at a point where we’d rather Bob secure his “investment” while younger generations can’t afford a home to live in.