That's not how infinities work. There are an uncountably infinite number of real numbers between 0 and 1, but that doesn't mean that new real numbers are constantly being produced. An infinite number of universes existing right now is a very different thing than a finite number existing right now, but more being created without end. Moreover, an infinite number of universes (or numbers, or anything) does not in any way imply (or dis-imply) some kind of unbounded process of creation. You can even have an infinite number of universes, with a finite rate of universes being destroyed, and will always still have an infinite number of universes in existence. Infinity is a state, not a process.

Of course, getting back to the subject at hand, whether physics supports the idea of infinite universes existing is a different matter altogether.

That is not correct. Capital and economic value is being destroyed constantly, and therefore money is being lost if we're not generating economic value at at least replacement rate.

People are burning otherwise potentially productive days/weeks/months of their all-to finite lives doing nothing productive. Other, less fortunate people are outright dying earlier than they otherwise would have for various reasons (not just the virus itself, but also to otherwise-treatable medical issues that overwhelmed healthcare systems cannot now address).

Productive capacity is being lost. An empty seat on an airplane, or a flight not made at all, are examples of economic value that is lost forever. The same is largely true for services not rendered. Other things like a lost season of college basketball represent value irrevocably lost as well.

Manufacturing facilities that otherwise run at output capacity lose whatever production capacity they had for the duration they're shut down--this is especially true in industries where technological obsolescence is rapid. Each day the California Tesla plant is down represents a number of cars that will now never be made.

All of the above represents money being destroyed/consumed without the typical value/money-creating activities creating replacement/replacement+ value. The examples above are not just theoretical thought exercises--actual hard currency is effectively destroyed in all of the above processes. Central banks can paper over the problem by issuing more currency, but the more they do that without a commensurate increase in real value in the economy represents a devaluation of all of the currency in circulation.

All of the above is not meant to discount the need to take dramatic steps to deal with the pandemic, and I'm not trying to argue that the steps being taken are not worth it (or that they are necessarily sufficient). As you note, letting the virus run rampant results in an entirely different sequence of destruction. Really, a global pandemic is like the economic equivalent of a hot nuclear war and subsequent nuclear winter. The choice for society and policymakers is which tradeoffs you want to make while dealing the situation.

if I were renting a place out I'd let the houses on either side know and give them my number to let me know if anything seems strange

The houses on either side are likely FURIOUS that this is happening and just waiting for proofs to report them 16 ways over. AirBNB neighbors don't exactly make the best friends.

That's my biggest gripe with this. They did the AirBNB thing. Shit happened, but they knew the risks. Their neighbors however didn't ask for this, and if the area was zoned purely residential, a house used commercially shouldn't have happened. They had to deal with 300 random people parking outside and enough shit that the cops were called. All because someone got greedy and can't follow the rules.

(If that kind of shit is allowed in their municipality, then the administration of the city needs to go to hell)

Despite all that, people's default reaction was to assume I was faking it for some unknown purpose

An unfortunate result of the crazy amount of people who do fake it.

if a student goes the distance of going to a doctor, being referred to psychologist, meeting with that psychologist long enough to get referred to a psychiatrist, and then is willing to take the poison/medicine prescribed that makes them sick every night, then chances are they really do have a pretty serious anxiety problem

On that, my significant other does have "real" anxiety issues, though not as severe as what yours seem to be. I'm absolutely not implying they aren't real. But even in her case, she didn't have to go through any of that to get a doctor's note. You can absolutely get one (and the medication) from your primary care, and some of the medications in low enough dose have very little side effect (and well, very little EFFECT too...). That's what gets abused to death.

But this seems to be asking for more. That it makes a student "uncomfortable" doesn't rise to the need for reasonable accommodation

Bingo. The tweets referred to in the article mention that this should only be for "diagnosed anxiety". Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and in the real world, a parent that is persistent enough can ALWAYS find a doctor who will diagnose their kid with anything.

An all too common example: when i was young, I was extremely out of shape, so physical education was problematic for me. I also really needed it. But one visit to my doctor, and since those were the days when "everyone has asthma", it took 10 minutes to convince him I did, he wrote me a note, and I easily got out of having to do any significant physical activity. I also believed it (I didn't try to lie...I truly thought there was something wrong with me).

My wife has real asthma and could have an attack/end up at the ER if she overdoes it. Obviously she should be excused of something like this. How do you tell them apart though?

Another example is how a friend of mine couldn't accept their kid were mediocre at school. Not bad, just not A+ students. They went to every doctor they could find until one gave them a dyslexia diagnostic. I think they said it took 15 (FIFTEEN!!!!) doctors before one agreed to it. And they repeated that with their next kid (Oh, yeah, 2 kids in a row with dyslexia that in both cases required 15 different doctors to agree to it. In the second case, even the doctor who diagnosed the first didn't agree...). Yeah, I'm sure it's legit.

The article, to me, is the same thing. Someone in the twitter thread said something akin to "When I had to give a presentation at school, the day before I couldn't sleep and my hands were sweaty. I was scared to death".

Yeah cowboy, you and EVERYONE ELSE. Congratulation, you're a human being. But i'm sure they talked to their doctor and got a note, and could get excused from it. That's absurd. Do a few dozen of those presentations, learn to prepare, confront your fears, and you'll get better.

At the same time, some other people mention that they'd get a panic attack. Well, forcing a kid to do something that will trigger a panic attack in front of everyone is probably not great. That person needs therapy. I'd also totally excuse them from it.

However, someone like the above is VERY VERY rare. But if you ask around, you'd think it's 1 out of 5 kid. Bullshit.

How do you find which is which is the tricky thing though. A lot of people will argue its better to let a couple of lazy fragile snowflakes get away with it than have a victim. They're probably right, but can we do better than that? I'd probably say if you can prove you're going to therapy for your anxiety, you're clear. Some will manage to fake a note about that too, but it should be much harder than "I talked to 2-3 doctors until one gave me a doctor note to make me go away", like so many kids do these days.

the Red Line trains run every 3 minutes during rush hour

Might be supposed to, but certainly don't, not even if you're at the end stations.

That....is not what happened.

A writer had discussion with players of games over an AMA (or something along those lines), and posted some of the hot takes on their personal twitter. One of the more famous players of said game followed up on the hot takes, by putting in their own views (in quite the civilized manner) in an effort to engage in a dialog.

Writer did not like that a player could disagree with them, and went absolutely berserk on them. That caught the attention of the player base. Generally, telling your customers to go fuck themselves is bad for the business, so they got fired.

Go away, take some tissue, it'll be gone in a day or so.

While it varies a lot (as you said, hundreds of types), the average cold lasts a heck of a lot longer than a day.

Nobody of normal health loses even a day of work to a cold over their lifetime

And while you're usually contagious before you even know you're sick, so it's not really possible to ever avoid infecting other people, if you go to work while you have a cold, you're a flat out asshole. Some people are not as healthy and risk serious issues if they get sick from you...others will have to stay home and possibly lose money if they have bad sick day policies (so could you, but its one person vs many), etc.

Assuming they are making a profit on hardware (though I think NIntendo usually is). Makes attach rate on games look bad though.

I'm Canadian myself (living in the US), and while I think Trump is absolutely batshit crazy in general, I can't help also feel the current immigration situation is also crazy. To be fair, I'm not particularly informed on the matter, it's just an initial impression.

Is there another 1st world country with such open immigration policies (not whats written in the books, but how it works in practice) that isn't getting any significant backlash from its population?

I moved to the US because it was much harder to get my significant other (American citizen) to move from the US to Canada. Recently that was the whole deal about someone in France being denied for not shaking hand. If I remember well Germany had a fairly open one but got a lot of flack for it a while back. Japan is LOLNOPE. What country is the US less open than?

I graduated in early 2000s myself. The finals were all on paper. I had a lot of programming related classes. 3-4 of those 2+ hour tests back to back.

Writing small apps, quick sorts, manipulating data structures, you name it. As much as hundreds or even thousands of lines of code handwritten over the course of a few days, every year. My finger had a mark from the pen. And if you made a mistake, not all professors were ok with just drawing arrows to "insert" code, so there was a lot of starting over too.

The challenge in those exams was not figuring out the solution. It was writing it down. I still have nightmares from it to this day.

It's kind of the other way around (originally) right? Hundreds/thousands of pre-IPO Facebook/Google/Whatever folks with too much money for their own good, all at the same time, started buying up stuff. Since they were making so much money, value went up. Now it's "market rate", and even if you work for them remotely (and live in the middle of nowhere), you get very close to the same rate. It's not just to pay for housing either: if you want to hire those folks and those who got hired afterward, you need to pay enough to make them give up their unvested RSUs.

So it's more "since people are paid so much, housing cost goes up". With people in other countries (even Europe, Japan, etc) buying paid a fraction of that, it's not particularly competitive. Combined with the insane flood of new CS grads and bootcamp/self taught folks following the hype train, supply and demand will catch up on this sooner or later.

When that all happens, prices will tank pretty hard (and we're going to be stuck with a bunch of silly zoning rules and various other laws that only make sense when a bunch of millionaires tries to buy the world)

Well, yes. The post I was replying to wasn't saying "Do everyone pay this much money to get their house cleaned?!". It was "Do [some] people pay this much to get their house cleaned?"

I was giving an example of why, yes, some (A LOT!) of people do. It's still only a tiny percentage of household. But that's true of a lot of things. The vast majority of people will never go through a kitchen renovation. There's still an entire industry around it.