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rpenm

577 karma · joined September 8, 2013

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rpenm··on Trump wins presidency for second time
Not true, restrictive states had significantly lower mortality. Mask mandates being the most significant factor. The largest gaps in mortality occur in the latter half of 2020 and the latter half of 2021, during Delta.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullartic...

rpenm··on The concurrence of three climatic events
The sea surface temperature data is from NOAA and the sea ice extent data is from JAXA. His claims are not difficult to verify, if you follow the citations.
rpenm··on Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction
DCCC site calls out the personal finance and ponzi stuff on August 24: https://web.archive.org/web/20220824162022/ttps://dccc.org/t...

Word is that state party officials tried to get press to investigate, but no one was interested at the time.

rpenm··on Who Is Rep.-Elect George Santos? His Résumé May Be Largely Fiction
The opposition pointed out his shady personal finances and ponzi stuff publicly, months before the election. Press apparently weren't interested at the time.
rpenm··on New ‘mirror’ fabric can cool wearers by nearly 5°C
Likely restrictive zoning. In much of North America, commercial and mixed-use buildings are not permitted in areas zoned for single-family residences.
rpenm··on Google removes its head of diversity after 2007 blog post surfaces
The reason it doesn't make sense is that I think everyone (even his defenders) are misreading the offending sentence.

"If I were a Jew" is meant to inform his "concern" not his "appetite".

The insatiable appetite for violent self-defense is obviously universal (he mentions Palestinian animus). What is unique to Jewish identity are the lessons of the Holocaust, which he thinks would make him more afraid of allowing instincts of self-defense to overwhelm sensitivity to the suffering of others. It's perfectly consonant with his previous paragraphs.

Right-wing media isolated the sentence from context and framed it as saying Jewish people have an insatiable appetite for violence. The phrasing was ambiguous enough to plausibly support that interpretation, and people saw what they were primed to detect. Helps that he chose not to publicly defend himself, and media generally don't like to scrutinize claims of bigotry/racism. Reminds me a bit of the Shirley Sherrod firing.

rpenm··on Oregon’s Tsunami Risk
You must walk before you can run. An Oregon carbon tax could serve as a model to others, and help inch us toward international consensus. It's a coordination problem; signalling serves an important role.
rpenm··on The Terrible Power of U.S. Border Officials They Violated My Rights
It astounds me that an article about government officials going on an unwarranted fishing expedition through a journalist's entire digital life would be flagged on HN.

Particularly when previous stories of CBP demanding access to tech workers' devices have been heavily upvoted in the past.

My guess is that the flaggers reacted purely to the headline, and never read the story. The headline pattern matches to "culture war", so they flagged it and moved on.

rpenm··on Firefox is back. It's time to give it a try
You can reopen tabs in a private window, but the session appears to be lost when you close the window.
rpenm··on European parliament committee approves vote on ‘disastrous’ copyright bill
The draft explicitly excludes hyperlinks from copyright protection.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

rpenm··on Giraffes Added to the Endangered Species List (2016)
Not that much longer. This mass extinction is believed to be 10-100 times faster than any previous.
rpenm··on Surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes (2016)
Yes, but it'd be very slow. Lye would be much more effective. But any solution strong enough to saponify the grease will be strong enough to damage your skin, so use gloves.

I usually just burn it off.

rpenm··on Surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes (2016)
Low pH cleaners are fine. Higher pH such as dishwasher detergent will strip the seasoning.
rpenm··on Surgeons urge people to throw out bristle BBQ brushes (2016)
Wiping with vinegar will cause rust. You want to go the other way - alkalis will convert grease into soluble compounds without damaging the steel.
rpenm··on YouTube and Reddit roll out new restrictions including channel and sub bans
Gun ownership rates have been falling, not rising.

http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun...

rpenm··on Merrell Trail Glove Failures and Minimal Running in a Communist Shoe
The author is incorrect - his shoe is a Vapor Glove 2, not a 3 - as evidenced by the design and clearly visibly label.

And the Vapor Glove is definitely not a follow-up to the Trail Glove, it's a different shoe. Merrell still makes Trail Gloves (though yes, the design has changed both for better and worse). I'm currently considering the Trail Glove 4.

rpenm··on Who the Hell Uses Onion Juice?
The requisite starch for dondurma (Turkish ice cream) is banned from export, due to the rarity of the orchids that produce it (also slow growth and very low yields). I'd be surprised if anyone regularly makes dondurma in the US.
rpenm··on TWiT is suing Twitter, alleging breach of contract and copyright infringement
A trademark is more precarious than a patent. If you don't defend the trademark in a timely manner, the infringer can make a laches defense. Unchecked infringement - however minor - can also cumulatively damage the distinctiveness of the trademark, making it more difficult to defend against future infringement.
rpenm··on The Kindest Way to Kill a Lobster
Clove oil works well, according to Dave Arnold: http://www.cookingissues.com/index.html%3Fp=5731.html
rpenm··on Vandals smash beehives, killing 500k bees
Honeybees are not native to North America. They actually may have a negative impact on native species.
rpenm··on Magic Leap One
The occluder wouldn't be in the same focal plane as the real world objects you are looking at. It'll darken a vague area around the object you want to mask.
rpenm··on YouTube Demonetization Screenshot Leaks and Secret YouTube Meeting
C-16 just adds gender identity to the list of identities you're already not permitted to discriminate or advocate violence against (race, color, ethnicity, religion, age, sex, disability). It does not prohibit debate over pronouns. Go read it: http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/royal-as...
rpenm··on Bob Lutz: Kiss the good times goodbye: The auto industry's change curve
Insurance cost isn't about the number of customers, it's about risk distribution and concentration. Flood insurance in high-risk areas is expensive because claims are frequent, large and concentrated (large percentage of customers making claims at the same time).

Unless future drivers become more accident-prone than today's drivers, their premiums will be similar. I don't see much incentive for adverse selection.

The point GP was making is that as autonomous vehicles replace manual, the likelihood of an inter-vehicular accident should also fall for the remaining manual vehicles, lowering their premiums. A nice positive externality - more reason to subsidize autonomous vehicles.

rpenm··on Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guilt
I'm sure that the priests didn't allow their complete control of an opaque judicial process to be affected by their biases. There's no way that their social, economic or political interests could possibly affect the outcome.

Doesn't this system fail when priests believe in miracles? Or when the guilty believe God will spare them? Or when the innocent don't believe in miracles? Or when a guilty nonbeliever considers the same game theory? Or when the accused isn't some homo economicus rational agent? These are hardly edge cases.

rpenm··on Post a boarding pass on Facebook, get your account stolen
And if the scammer moves your fare to an earlier flight, they get away and your ticket is void when you show up.
rpenm··on Bees Are Bouncing Back from Colony Collapse Disorder
People are worried about the wrong bees. Hundreds of native bee species are in decline - possibly due to pesticides and loss of habitat. An enormous number of plants - including many crops - are dependent on native bees for pollination.
rpenm··on Verizon Throttles Netflix Subscribers in Test It Doesn't Inform Customers About
Price discrimination is when a producer charges different customers different prices for the same good. So yes, price discrimination is implicitly an arbitrage opportunity - assuming there is competition.

Truly different goods don't have the same implications for consumer and producer surplus. That's not to say that price discrimination can't be disguised.

rpenm··on Verizon Throttles Netflix Subscribers in Test It Doesn't Inform Customers About
It takes significant non-monetary motives (eg. personal relationships or cultural norms) to maintain a cartel.
rpenm··on Verizon Throttles Netflix Subscribers in Test It Doesn't Inform Customers About
Price discrimination doesn't work under perfect competition (see: law of one price).

Insofar as it might work for Home Depot, it may be due to local monopoly (competitor is not co-located) and asymmetric information (customers assume a bigger quality difference than is true). However in my experience, the price of premium tools/supplies often does reflect higher production cost these days.

rpenm··on The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills
A single buyer negotiating with multiple sellers can force prices down to cost. Whether it actually does so is a public choice problem.
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