Neuron

Just this one small part of the massive nationwide conspiracy of sedition is already much worse than Watergate.

As much as I hate meta/Facebook, don't get me wrong, I don't think these laws are right either. I don't think you should have to pay to simply provide a link to another website. This runs antithetical to the whole idea and structure of the internet. If they're taking the article or photos and republishing it on their own website that's different and they obviously should have to pay for that. The linking to news sites is actually good for news sites though and increases profit for publishers by driving traffic to their sites, it doesn't take profit away. The news publishers are free to have a paywall or put advertisements on the page being linked too and get revenue from that. This feels like publishers wanting to eat their cake and keep it too, they want big search engines and social media to link to their articles so the news sites get traffic and revenue from advertisements/subscriptions, and then they also want the search engines who created that traffic in the first place to pay for linking too? I think publishers are shooting themselves in the foot in the long run lobbying for these laws all for a pittance of cash.

This idea could also affect things like lemmy too eventually and make them impossible, if you need to pay to simply provide a link to a news story or other website.

The former president? No wait he wanted to inject bleach. Or sunlight or something I dunno.

https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagreement/

Above is a good summary. Here's my personal take if interested:

Short story is an nih grant was awarded to a US based non profit research coalition, and the grant involved collaboration among multiple institutes. NIH funds are generally given to US based researchers primarily, but it's also common if you have a good reason for the project to have international collaboraters on the grant as well. In this case they were collaborating with the Wuhan virology institute, who are obviously going to be very helpful in any collaboration to study corona viruses, since multiple novel corona viruses have been found or made the jump to humans in China before. So yes, a small portion of a much larger grant was sent to Wuhan, who helped provided corona virus samples for US researchers to study.

As an aside it's also mentioned there was another corona virus 96% similar in genome to covid was previously isolated by that lab from bats. But saying that's proof they artifically made covid from that virus is pretty ridiculous, altering genomes to that extent and still having a functioning virus is basically science fiction, would take an absurd amount of technology and resources that just do not exist currently. For comparison, humans and chimpanzees have 98.8% similar genomes, so 96% is really not that close. To get from 96% similar to covid even in the much smaller viral genome would still involve at least 1200 changes to different nucleotides across every gene and structural non coding regions and still have all the proteins it encodes not only somehow still work and be expressed correctly but do this even better than before. We're struggling along with just slight changes to one gene at a time in genetic engineering currently.

Another point that keeps coming up, is research that was done in North Carolina (not China) that some people argue as gain of function research but by other definitions is not (if nih considered it gain of function research it would not have been funded due to a funding pause with that). This keeps being conflated with US funding gain of function research in China, which is not the case.

All in all, the NIH was absolutely interested in funding research into corona viruses because of the fear that something like this would happen after multiple novel corona viruses that started pandemics. I'm still very skeptical of the lab leak theory personally, when we already have multiple instances of novel corona viruses causing epidemics lately, like obviously it could happen again and still can. I suppose it's possible this virus was found somewhere else, then brought to the lab, then leaked from the lab, but then it would have already been circulating and could have caused a pandemic anyways even without a lab leak. I think people just want to have an easy answer or someone to clearly blame, when the whole world is actually to blame for some extent with out terrible responses to potential pandemics and actually chronic underfunding to this problem that should be a high priority for the whole world. And probably will be happening with only greater frequency as we encroach further on habitats and become more and more densely populated and interconnected. Saying oh we just need to lock down viral labs even more (which hey I'm not even saying is a bad idea, keep that stuff locked up tight), is a much simpler problem to tackle so people would rather go after that than the true larger issues we're facing with our poor abilities to surveil for and respond to potential pandemics.

Hope some found that interesting at least, sorry for the novel.

It's true, electronic medical records range from garbage to totally broken in terms of usability for healthcare workers. Then you realize the actual customer is the hospital system, and all the design decisions start to make sense. Because the real purpose of the software is efficient billing, not patient care.

We're getting closer and closer to "You're in a desert, walking along when you look down and see a tortoise. It's crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over. But it can't. Not with out your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"

The neurons you're born with stay with you for the most part. Most of their complex organization is formed through a series of one time events early in development that can't really be replicated and then stays with you for the rest of your life. You get shingles when you're older because the same neurons were with you that got infected by chicken pox when you were younger are still there. There's a few limited areas in the nervous system where new neurons might be formed, but in general neurons are life long cells so be nice to your nervous system. Most other cell types in your body are turning over as you said, including glia and other types of cells in your brain.

Big concern, especially with the case being tried in Florida federal court. This most recent case is filed in DC however, and the vast majority of people who live in DC are not very enamored with trump, to say the least.

Dreariness index not accounting for the fact that lack of potable water, temps above 110, and being on fire are all pretty dreary. But yeah inland northeast is pretty cloudy from the from the great lakes, also makes it warmer and snowier in the winter than the Midwest.

It shouldn't be a big deal, but prior to the Biden administration, Betsy Devos under Trump was doing everything possible to block even already available student loan forgiveness and throwing up as much roadblocks as possible. The department education had to be sued in court to get loan forgiveness granted for things they should have been helping with not blocking. And even after all that they repeatedly failed to follow their own settlements and court orders for years, just refusing to grant forgiveness. So even though a lot of forgiveness was technically already on the books, having a administration actually helping this process instead of actively trying to prevent it is a huge breath of fresh air. They also previously changed many terms in public service loan forgiveness to help it apply to more people and made lots of other positive changes that luckily the supreme court did not block. At least not yet.

Yeah the article is a little rosy and overstating things by using words like carbon free which obviously isn't the case, but fta:

"Retrofitting a propeller plane with fuel cells and liquid-hydrogen tanks would result in a nearly 90 percent reduction in life-cycle emissions, compared to the original aircraft, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), a nonprofit think tank. That’s assuming the hydrogen is made using only renewable electricity —not with fossil fuels, the way the vast majority of hydrogen is produced today."

Battery powered commercial airplanes are a pipe dream right now, batteries are just too heavy for anything practical with flight. Solid state batteries might reduce it some but probably not enough. We'll still need some kind of mass long distance travel in the future. Once they're able to scale up renewable energy sources even more, hydrogen made with those sources could become an important storage medium for getting that energy to power planes or other things where batteries are impractical. So it makes sense to at least be exploring these technologies.

Even for right now natural gas has a higher energy to co2 ratio than other types of fuels, so it's possible there may even be a current efficiency boost, though I don't know that off the top of my head.

If every new technology was attacked saying, well it's not perfect right now so don't even bother trying, we wouldn't have electric cars or all sorts of other innovations. I agree with you on the article though, I hate when they say stuff like "look we have carbon free airplanes now" when obviously we don't.

https://archive.is/te7MM

Thanks for posting that! The grant was interesting. Specific aims page is down on page 107 to save others who want to read it some time.

One of their main hypotheses they wanted to test was that covid viruses they found in animals in the Wuhan market would have greater fitness than those found in wild animals due to spillover between multiple species and other differences in the environment, which in light of current events seems a reasonable hypothesis.

Unfortunately yes. Not you or many in this forum probably, but it's popular many places to portray LGBT rights as "colonialism" and the idea that the western world is "exporting same sex relations" to places such as Africa. Then taking that a step further and using the forces of anti colonial feelings and nationalism and turning them against LGBT people. When it should be clear to anyone paying attention that, if anything, it's homophobia that has been exported around the world, both historically and currently. Tons of examinations of the topic available, here's one: https://www.aaihs.org/did-europe-bring-homophobia-to-africa/

Not to say that Africa is a monolith where every single pre colonial culture was super LGBT friendly or something, but just general trends.

It even got adapted as a short animated bonus episode to the Sandman TV show.

This has actually flipped now, more doctors are liberals than conservatives. Doctors are also overwhelmingly pro choice: https://core.wisc.edu/2021/12/06/cores-survey-of-doctors-highlights-widespread-support-for-abortion-access/

Harder to find evidence of historical attitudes, so not exactly sure when it flipped from the physician crusade of the 1800s against abortion, but here's a survey from 1991 showing broad support: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1781824/

The modern AMA (as much as I personally dislike them, and honestly most doctors identity very little with them) was also totally against the Dobbs ruling: https://www.ama-assn.org/about/leadership/dobbs-ruling-assault-reproductive-health-safe-medical-practice

For more accurate physician opinions you should also look at individual specialty groups, which tend to be much more representative of their members priorities. For instance ACOG, also totally against the Dobbs decision of course: https://www.acog.org/news/news-releases/2022/06/acog-statement-on-the-decision-in-dobbs-v-jackson

I'd also be quick not to jump to conclusions and assume a doctor's unwillingness to break the law is entirely selfish with no regard to patient welfare. If they broke the law, after getting thrown in jail for murder and being unable to care for their own families and loved ones, they'd also be unable to see more patients, many of whom they would have been able to help and may not get help now. Doctors have many patients, not just one.

Reviews in play store are now somewhat based on region and type of device you use so the score will vary between people. For me it's 3.6 as well right now.

At least not as dreary as Alaska affording to the map! I love the snow, unfortunately the clouds get depressing but do also mean we don't really get that oppressive Midwest cold that often occurs in the sunniest midwinter days.

Taking these medicines in the forms they are found in nature is a horrible idea. Most of the plants they come from are poisonous because the therapeutic index of most of the drugs here are low, meaning the line between medicine and poison is very fine. Purifying the ingredient and allowing tight control of the dosage is the reason any of these are able to be used safely. Please don't go around eating bits of foxglove or belladonna.

As you've seen, modern medicine is not shy about taking ingredients found in nature when they actually have a useful purpose in medicine, and enabling them to be actually used safely instead of taking some random unknown dosage of a potentially deadly drug and hoping for the best.

Except for fixing vitamin and mineral deficiencies, supplements are ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. They're in desperate need of better regulation in the United States. They scam tons of people and get away with ridiculous claims like fighting dementia based on no evidence that would be totally illegal for any actual pharmaceutical company to claim, all while selling bottles of stuff with "proprietary formulas" or claiming to have plants that aren't even in there when independent researchers look at them. All totally legal by the way, no requirement for ingredients listed on a supplement to reflect reality. Stay away if you value your health or your money. Not saying pharmaceutical companies are always shining beacons of beneficence here, obviously I have many problems with them as well, but they at least have some sort of regulated evidence base for the most part.

Space time warp hits the board, transforming everything to 4d chess

It was authorized by congress, specifically the heroes act. It gave the executive branch the power to "waive or modify loans" in reponse to a national emergency, and cornavirus was declared one. The law passed by congress explicitly gives Biden the power to do this. It'd a terrible ruling by the court. Not to mention the suing parties have no standing to begin with, and the suit never should have even gone forward on that basis in the first place.

From the article

Agreed. One day I realized my computer was completely out of space, was barely still running. Turns out Microsoft store had dutifully downloaded many copies of a game until the entire drive was full. Uninstalling got rid of only one copy of the files. Store said it was no longer installed even though all the files of many copies were still there. Deleting them manually was a horrible mess of permissions issues, involving the need to edit the registry and things too. I think I ended up needing to boot into Linux from a usb stick to finally fix everything up. Anyways, steam for me if I have the choice. Let me just delete files if I need to Microsoft, geeze.

No this isn't really it in this case. There was a law passed by congress called the heroes act. It explicitly gave the power to the executive branch to "waive or modify" loans in response to national emergencies. Corona virus pandemic was legally declared a national emergency, so Biden invoked the law to waive and modify the loans. The supreme court is really out here in left field, bending over backwards as to why the executive branch can't use the heroes law in this way. John Roberts wrote some ridiculous stuff about how "waive" and "cancel" aren't the same or something. The conservatives claim to be "textualists" but this is a false front, they just claim whatever partisan republican priority at the time they feel like.

IANAL, but can read, and I think many people here are totally missing what this ruling actually says and doesn't say. It says the standard that Colorado used in this man's trial was too loose and would theoretically allow for conviction of protected speech. They did not say the speech in this case was definitely protected. They did not say it wasn't threatening. It's quite possible that if Colorado now chooses to retry the case that a jury would still decide he was guilty under the stricter standard too, but they have to retry him with a trial and jury working under that stricter standard, so that the overly loose law can't be used to theoretically restrict protected speech under the first ammendment in the future. The supreme court just corrected the standard Colorado was using and kicked it back to them, they did not exonerate the guy unless Colorado chooses not to try him again. The headlines are all being written to be extra inflammatory and misleading.

Just to take it to an extreme and make it extra simple, let's say we pass a law that says, you are guilty of murder if you are anywhere vaguely near where someone was killed. A guy is caught on video clearly murdering someone. They take him to court and tell the jury in their official jury instructions, if this man was vaguely near where the murder occurred he is guilty. They of course find him guilty. Supreme court steps in and says, wait, sure he's probably guilty, but the standard you had the jury judging him by was ridiculous, that can't be the standard for a murder conviction, and would probably result on infringement of multiple constitutional rights if you keep using that standard. Do a new trial with a better standard.

Understandably people have been pretty aghast that Barr is saying all this stuff while being non committal about whether he would still vote for Trump. I wonder if it's possible he's avoiding saying that publicly for now in case he's called on to testify in the triak. If he's on the record on public TV saying he's voting against trump, possible on the witness stand on cross examination trump's lawyers could try and argue he's partisan and his statements are politically motivated. Or he's a coward I don't know, just a thought.