2,415 karma · joined April 21, 2021
Since Trikafta is a blend of 3 small-molecule drugs, is it possibly feasible to publish a do-it-yourself synthesis process?
Or perhaps the community could even come together to set up a lab, where individuals could travel and go through the motions to produce their own?
I recognize this isn't ideal, but it might be legal...
They are not. There are many, many, many cut coins, and often the cuts are "disfiguring" which will typically harm the "eye appeal" of the coin.
Cutting coins was common practice of the time, and if a coin passed through many different hands, it was basically inevitable it would end up cut.
It's kind of like seeing writing on cash... Most people don't write on their money, but enough people handle it that it's going to happen.
The most valuable coins typically sat in hoards, uncirculated, since circulation would itself wear on the coin and reduce the grade. I agree that seems a little backward, since it's not nearly as interesting to imagine the "life" of a pristine coin, but it is what it is.
If only there was a word besides "hard" for this situation
Both of these are astronomically high in the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum, and it's been some time since any breaking bugs have been found, so the odds of any remaining exploitable bugs must be pretty low.
A new bug could be introduced, obviously, but I think the review period for new changes reduces the odds of that too.
This more analogous to different model years of a car, rather than entirely different car models.
The customer immediately and intuitively understands 14 is better than 13, 15 is better than 14, etc.
The main thing clear to me is that the "mental flow chart" involved in selecting an Apple phone is much, much clearer than it would be for selecting a Nokia.
This is a question of whether to turn old coal plants back on.
It would be proof of sex, but not proof of assault.
Yep. This is a phenomenon everywhere. I don't have hard data to support this, but I'm under the impression that soccer fans in Europe are even crazier.
But the question remains: what was the political ideology of these youths? Anarchists? Marxists? Fascists? Technocrats? Monarchists??? We may never know!
What's your objection to Nolo Press? They seem to have already done that.
There are actually carve outs for these, although I agree the fact that the HUD is "transparent" makes it ambiguous (still, I think you can argue it "reduces" the driver's "clear view").
Without those carve outs, yes, they'd clearly be illegal.
Here's the relevant provisions:
> (b) This section does not apply to any of the following:
> (1) Rearview mirrors.
> (11) An electronic communication device affixed to the center uppermost portion of the interior of a windshield within an area that is not greater than five inches square, if the device provides either of the following:
> (A) The capability for enforcement facilities of the Department of the California Highway Patrol to communicate with a vehicle equipped with the device.
> (B) The capability for electronic toll and traffic management on public or private roads or facilities.
> (12) A portable Global Positioning System (GPS), which may be mounted in a seven-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield farthest removed from the driver or in a five-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield nearest to the driver and outside of an airbag deployment zone, if the system is used only for door-to-door navigation while the motor vehicle is being operated.
> (13) (A) A video event recorder with the capability of monitoring driver performance to improve driver safety, which may be mounted in a seven-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield farthest removed from the driver, in a five-inch square in the lower corner of the windshield nearest to the driver and outside of an airbag deployment zone, or in a five-inch square mounted to the center uppermost portion of the interior of the windshield. As used in this section, “video event recorder” means a video recorder that continuously records in a digital loop, recording audio, video, and G-force levels, but saves video only when triggered by an unusual motion or crash or when operated by the driver to monitor driver performance.
> No person shall operate a motor vehicle while wearing glasses having a temple width of one-half inch or more if any part of such temple extends below the horizontal center of the lens so as to interfere with lateral vision.
FWIW, I think this is entirely legitimate, since your peripheral vision is definitely impaired. That wouldn't be the case if the information was on a HUD instead.
But even if there was some hypothetical VR headset that has perfect peripheral vision pass-through, it's still at best ambiguously legal until the legislature takes action.
By the way, a HUD is probably illegal too, CA Veh Code § 26708 (2022)
> (2) A person shall not drive any motor vehicle with any object or material placed, displayed, installed, affixed, or applied in or upon the vehicle that obstructs or reduces the driver's clear view through the windshield or side windows.
There is a list of exceptions to this, but none appear to apply.
The thing that troubles me is that enforcing a certain degree of plausible deniability also limits the harm that these athletes cause themselves with the drugs.
When you throw the plausible deniability away like this, you open the gates to reckless drug abuse for the sake of competition, which could be an order of magnitude more lethal than everybody doping in secret moderation.
I'd be a lot more comfortable with it in principle if they were allowing drug use, but enforcing sane limits and disqualifying athletes who were clearly being reckless and causing themselves serious harm.
There have been a number of longitudinal studies focused on steroids in particular, and they failed to produce really meaningful evidence of steroid mortality. One study in particular looked at East German Olympic athletes, many of whom were the witting or unwitting subjects of a state-sponsored steroid program, and found that as a population, they actually lived longer than their West German Olympic counterparts, in relation to their national population. (Table 2)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7739809/
That said, the bodybuilders may be abusing steroids to such a degree that it's causing the excess mortality.
It's a very interesting subject, I read this study about it recently:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-022-01801-0
Rich + Rich = Richer
Richer + Richer = Richest
Richest + Poop = Trump
I think you're right that it's a personality thing, maybe connected to how strong the "rationalization drive" is? I don't know.
I guess I'd rather tickle the rationalizing side of my brain with a rationalizination of the tendency to stop rationalizing rather than just stop rationalizing :)
I think of the brain as a "rationalization machine". It observes environmental inputs, and reflexively seeks to ascribe a cause for those inputs. In so doing, a causal model of the world is constructed (whether accurate or not), allowing the agent to make intelligent decisions about what actions to take in order to produce desired outcomes.
What hallucinogenic drugs tend to do is overwhelm the brain with sensory inputs that are sui generis and cannot be folded neatly into a pre-existing causal model of reality, but that are so numerous that they cannot simply be ignored.
So the "protective mechanism" of the brain, rather than abandoning or risking damage to this highly valuable causal model of reality, is to shunt these experiences over into an "other" category of mystical and religious significance. The fact that these experiences are inexplicable, rather than being an indication of any "malfunction" in the brain which might prompt us to doubt our perception in general, is instead proof of their cause: the incomprehensible divine.
This isn't academic, just my 2c.
There is a booming black market for bootleg Chinese Semaglutide (and Tirzepatide, and Retatrutide, and etc)
The current SOTA in anti-ship technology are the Chinese hypersonic missiles such as the DF-26, which are believed to pose a credible threat to aircraft carriers. Iran is also developing hypersonic missiles like the Khalij Fars, but the Houthis don't have these and they are substantially less capable than the Chinese ones.
FTA:
> Civilian vessels can adopt security measures to thwart attempted boardings, but they lack defences against anti-ship missiles. While Western military vessels have advanced air and missile-defence capabilities – using them to down Houthi missiles and UAVs – they are constrained by the number of interceptor missiles they can carry and the challenge of restocking depleted inventories.
Maybe Mark will have a similar moment of redemption, who knows.
pours cereal box out onto the floor
"Some have called me a cereal instigator."
I assume you're talking about salaries in the USA, and this is largely because global salaries have risen to take more of their fair share of the pie. At the same time, this has put a lot of pressure on US labor.
The postwar period from 1945 to around 1980 in the USA was historically aberrant. In 1970, the USA's share of global GDP was 38%. In 2023 it was around 15.5%.
Globally, living standards have skyrocketed since the 80s.
https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-condit...
But that is inequality, too.
Just as a thought experiment, if you were to take the global GDP and spread it perfectly evenly over every person on the planet, you'd have less than $13k per capita. That's around half of the income per capita in Hammond.
I think there's a perception that there's this massive hoard of wealth at the very top, and if only we could distribute it more fairly, we could solve a bevy of social ills. It's not that simple.
It's absolutely true that there are some unbelievably wealthy people, but they are also small in number. If you were to magically disgorge, say, every American with $50M+ of 90% of their wealth, you'd be lucky to be able to use the proceeds to raise all the Hammonds to the living standards of all the Boca Ratons, which as far as you're concerned here, does not really change their lifestyles.
Honestly I'm much more disgusted that billionaires exist while there are infants dying of malnutrition than I am disgusted that billionaires exist while there's people worried about their kids and their retirement. Those sorts of things are really unavoidable as long as we're grappling with scarcity.
To think that this was right there the whole time and we settled on "WiFi" instead!
Doubtful. Beeper has several legitimate causes of action to bring their own suit, if they really expect that outcome (and more importantly, if they have the financial resources to litigate)
Just because our perception prevents us from predicting outputs from inputs in a way that appears random does not mean that it is just a chaotic system. This is part of the question posed by the original article: does quantum theory provide certain mechanisms that could permit non-deterministic agents to intervene in causal ways that are not predictable? Or would we have to appeal to the supernatural / mystic / divine in order for such a thing to even be possible?
Certain interpretations (e.g., the "Many Worlds" interpretation of QM) are more conducive to this possibility than others.
Generally, "free will" is simply stated as "the freedom to do otherwise". Returning to the "simulated brain" example -- if the computer simulation is faster than the "squishy brain" agent, then it has already predicted the outcome, and the "squishy brain" agent has no "freedom to do otherwise": the outcome is pre-determined.