stolenmerch

I suppose the first thing that might come to mind is the correlation between obesity and serious disease outcome. "Pooled analysis show individuals with obesity were more at risk for COVID-19, >46% higher for hospitalization. >113% higher for ICU, 48% increase in death... The underlying metabolic and inflammatory factors of individuals with obesity also play a considerable role in the manifestation of severe lung diseases. [0] Given that only about 20% of sub-Saharan Africa is overweight compared to nearly 70% of North America [1], I might consider this one factor.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/obr.13128

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/obesity

PeriodO is a public domain gazetteer of scholarly definitions of historical, art-historical, and archaeological periods. It eases the task of linking among datasets that define periods differently. It also helps scholars and students see where period definitions overlap or diverge.

Gary Urton's book, "Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records" [0] is a great introduction to this topic. After reading this I was reminded how not all writing systems can easily be encoded in utf-8, à la Awesome Falsehoods. [1]

[0] https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/urtsig

[1] https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood

There's another related phenomenon where a claim can be true and false at the same time yet many people get trapped attempting to prove the claim's veracity in a series of "no, actually..." proofs. Each party thinks they have the "actual" truth and both are just spinning around the same nebulous. Examples of this are hard to provide because they only spawn a new version of the controversy. The fantastic story "Sort By Controversial" gives you a glimpse into this occurrence. [0]

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

I just prefer the sharp edges of GameScience dice, regardless of their trueness. The Zocchi Ruby Gem dice are the closest to the pleasure of rolling casino dice, but I'd still prefer they be about 20% larger and heavier with ink that doesn't lift off from too much handling. I'll take a slight bias in the rolls if it means a superior aesthetic experience.

This article is describing an increased trend in young adult strokes that has been happening for at least 25 years.[0] It "closely followed an increase in several chronic conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity and lipid disorders."[1]

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21898534/

[1] https://text.npr.org/467222400

I don't want to generalize too much, but I find it interesting I only see this unholy triumvirate affecting my white collar friends. My working class friends seem relatively free of most of this baggage. Their social media use is contained to people they know on facebook, they never stopped going bowling and to the bars, even during the pandemic, and they have a surprisingly robust family/friend/church support group and don't seem as socially isolated. They have their own problems, for sure, but tragic feelings of anomie don't seem to be one of them.

Probably the same reason it might be useful to say "racial bias" instead of just "bias" or "religious conflict" instead of just "conflict". It frames the topic as having a complex, historical context. Again, the reporter would then drill down into precise meanings and investigate nuanced causes.

The only thing I'm confused about is why a reporter can't use a term like "ethnic tension" as a high-level overview term and then also devote many paragraphs to explain in detail the precise meaning in that particular context. Seems like that is how reporting works in every other domain.

I think the issue is many people feel no single person or group should be deciding for others what the truth is or what is(n't) "misinformation", especially based on politics. Covid showed us that many times these authorities of truth could get it wrong and suppress information that was at least worthy of discussion.

I find it fascinating that there is so much hand-wringing in the library world about challenges to books that a small part of the public finds offensive. Claims of obscenity, etc. that libraries then celebrate during Banned Books Week. Yet, this site shows just how willing librarians are to throw out books they personally find offensive. They are in charge of the collections, I get it, and it's not that big of a deal, but it's an interesting tension. Part of me wishes librarians would be just a bit more neutral in proclaiming what is definitively offensive or not.

For example, this is from the entry for the 1957 book "Rocket Power and Space Flight".

"The author talks to the “fellows” who wrote him letters and uses the pronoun “he” and “him” throughout the book. Reason #1 to weed it."

Sure, this is an old book and would probably get weeded anyway. But why make such a big deal about community members objecting to material when you yourself object to so much material?

I'm not seeing where he calls for picking fights to prevent diversity. The example for Berserker Strategy was to consciously invite controversial speakers to campus.

Interesting. I don't think I've ever considered Svelte a "language" in the sense it's being used in this article. More like a compiler or maybe framework written in Typescript, which is a superset of JavaScript. I only say this because I'm not sure I'd experience the same cross-language interference with syntax and semantics described here. Not an expert, but isn't it just compiled HTML/CSS/JS with some custom components and templates?

Number 10 for March 6, 2022 is a piece from the Huffington Post about SNLs cold open. I'll never understand how something like this makes a Top 10 list of things I need to know today.

I was a Flash developer during most of the 2000s until exactly this memo. I was incredibly productive and felt like my art and engineering sides were used constantly. So many client projects but also personal projects and games during that time. Then it was just taken away in what felt overnight. It took me years to get up to speed with html5/css3/js, which wasn't ready for primetime when this memo came out. I'm probably a better developer in many ways in the long run but I still, in 2022, can't bang out fun flash cartoons or simple little games with the speed of 20 years ago. Sure we're not locked into a browser plugin and accessibility is much better, but it still feels like a several steps back.

I seem to be one of the few people here who likes Goodreads and uses it daily. I have no compelling reason to switch, but Booqsi looks gorgeous and fast, so I was interested in trying it out. I know it's early days, but a few things stand out.

Overall, the data seems a bit messy. I tried adding a few books from my currently reading list on Goodreads and ran into some problems. The first book I tried to add had a duplicate entry. Both had identical metadata but are separate records; if I marked one as finished it didn't update the other. Many books seem to be missing editions, alternate covers, subtitles, and other important details. Other times multiple editions seem to be split out as separate titles but with no clue to edition. This gets confusing fast for certain types of books.

It seems difficult to find people to follow. Everything looks to be private by default so I couldn't find people based on the books they read. The "people who read it" feature does not seem to work as expected. It seems it doesn't include books currently being read or books simply put on a favorite shelf without marking it 'read' - either that or I'm locked out of seeing what people I don't follow are reading. I have to follow them first? As it stands, I don't know anyone personally on Booqsi, so I'm relying on following interesting strangers based on reading habits, which I can't seem to do. It's doubtful my friends who already don't use Goodreads very much are going to switch, so I'm looking for Booqsi to be more like a "twitter for books", which it currently isn't without the option to be public.

A couple more books didn't exist and I didn't see an option to add it. I assume some crowdsourcing option like Goodreads is on the roadmap for Booqsi though.

Not to mention it's TUEsday! So there's also a homophone in there.

Nothing huge, just don't personally care for evaluated output above the cell. Kinda breaks all the conventions of the command line, Jupyter, etc. Not that I couldn't get used to it, but originally Observable output below the cell but then switched in some update and I never really went back. Such a minor little pet peeve, I know.

After some light testing, this seems to work really well. I've had issues with other Javascript kernels for Jupyter and I personally don't care for the UX of Observable, so this is exciting.

And about the same number of Democrats believe the widely debunked conspiracy theory that Trump colluded with the Russians to interfere with the 2016 election or that members of congress were paid Russian assets. That's the thing about polarization. It's easy to see the crazy when it's your political enemy doing it.

> Substitutes are hard to get right now in most school districts

> wearing masks in schools might help just enough to keep schools open and operating

I think those are great points and I often try to look at it from the perspective of my child's teacher, not to mention the regulatory nightmares the administration goes through. I am friends and family with many public school teachers. I also think that's the point of the article though. It's hard to get a sub because teachers are quitting, not because of being out sick.

I don't want your dad to get covid either. But every single school child and teacher has access to a vaccine at this point and teachers who feel they are at a special risk have access to KN95 masks. Instead, everyone has to wear some kind of cloth mask to show that "wearing is caring". We now have almost two years of data to look at. The risk to children is absurdly low.

I sort of hope so. Starting my child in Kindergarten this year has soured me to public schools somewhat. Nonsensical mask/distancing/sanitation protocols for people at low or no risk with no end in sight and seemingly dictated by the teachers' unions. Rudimentary and remedial math and reading education my child already learned in preschool just to catch every kid up to a common core. Cancelling fun holiday traditions in the name of equity and replacing them with bland, institutional versions (Halloween banned and replaced with a November "disguise day"). Most days my child comes home complaining how boring everything is and it kind of breaks my heart. I thought it'd be this inspirational learning center and instead it feels patronizing and mildly indoctrinating. Not sure there are other options though, so we'll make the most of it.

In this case it might be a drop shipper, which is completely legit. I've seen other fake stores, however, that scrape listings from eBay and offer them on their "store". They somehow generate valid USPS tracking numbers yet never send your item. They only take PayPal because PayPal will not accept any disputed charge with a tracking number.

Hospital beds were "maxed out" before the pandemic. [0] at around 64%. They are sitting at around 78% on average now, with hard hit areas at around 80-85% according to your link. These are almost all at-risk and unvaccinated people. That's my point. If mandates and lockdowns are based on case counts instead of actual dire outcomes, then I fear we're going to continue seeing strange policies and laws for people at little to no risk, namely children and the vaccinated.

[0] https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200326/us-hospital-beds-we...

If I'm reading this correctly, this is "protection against severe disease" and has little to do with transmission. The National Airport Data from Israel seems to suggest "the absolute number of infected individuals in the Vaccinated (boosted) group is likely to be at least as high as in the Unvaccinated" [0]

So it seems to me that as long as we all remain obsessed with case numbers and not actual hospitalizations and death, this isn't going away, at least not anytime soon. I personally find this beyond depressing.

[0] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3963606

Right, and that's why the physical art analogy breaks down. Was just trying to come up with a slightly better physical art analogy. Copies are possible, forgeries are possible, and provenance is a real challenge. However with NFTs it all takes an abusive amount of electricity.

I really don't think that Mona Lisa example is correct. Maybe I misunderstand NFTs, but wouldn't it be more like a printmaker who can make as many copies as desired, but the museum sells something like the Artist's Proof and documents the sale in an official newsletter that goes out to all members? Yes, everyone else has a print or a poster version, but only one buyer has the Artist's Proof and can prove its provenance. Not a perfect analogy, but closer in my opinion.

New Long Leg by Dry Cleaning

Designer by Aldous Harding

Infinity of Now by The Heliocentrics

House of Sugar by (Sandy) Alex G

Sex and Food by Unknown Mortal Orchestra

FMTI by Dirty Art Club

Freedom's Goblin by Ty Segall

Sound Ancestors by Madlib

That's actually a good point because the "until most of the population has been vaccinated" is tricky. We don't really know how effective the vaccines are against new variants. Probably better than nothing I'd guess but it also doesn't completely stop transmission. An overly optimistic timeline is 100 days to get a tweaked vaccine for a new variant but we saw that's about how long it took for Delta to move completely through Florida. That plus the possibility of animal reservoirs and many high-compliance mask and lockdown areas getting large spikes anyway leaves me skeptical we can necessarily solve this through the public health policies that have been tried. I just want answers like everyone else and am trying to just learn to be healthy and live with this virus for the rest of my life. Happy to get an annual shot like the flu when/if this becomes endemic and seasonal.