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Comment Re: Yes (Score 2) 152

Mosquitos form a tiny portion of the diet of the animals that eat them, including bats. Mosquitos are pollinators, but again. Many othe pollinators pollinate the same species of plants. Making mosquitoes extinct might actually help honey bees by decreasing competition for shared resources. There have been multiple studies, and surprisingly, there is no evidence that removing mosquitoes would cause a trophic cascade, and a great deal of evidence that it would not. We should do it.

Comment Re: Pills Won't Stop Your Sin (Score 1) 181

Well they started out as a diabetes drug which is one of the major correlations, so there is that. And anecdotally it does decrease desire to eat bad foods. The primary issues are insufficient protein intake and all the things that come along with rapid weight loss. Also, suddenly changing your diet, even for the better, can be hard on things like the gall bladder. So it is not risk free. Which is why doctors supposedly should only be prescribing it when the health risks pf obesity outweigh those risks.

Comment Re: Pills Won't Stop Your Sin (Score 1) 181

It is the whole can't vs won't thing. Because someone could have a completely different personality dropped in there head complete with new brain chemistry, and make the other choice. But as you say. That isn't very useful. They won't. Not sure if it is related to free will vs determinism, but it is something like that. Not every decision I could make, is a decision I *can* make.

Comment Re: Individual tariffs (Score 1) 224

Tariffs would take a long time, but chaotic trade policy could wralen the dollar until it doesn't hold the sole position of world currency reserve. Nothing can completely take its place unless some other countries start doing some politically impossible things, but losing that spot would make labor in the us much cheaper. Combine that with politicizing the bureaucracy even more than it already was using schedule F means the dollar stays weak as the prospect of whiplash regulation scares off investors. The idea would then go to start printing money to build infrastructure for onshoring, and then keeping moderate stable tariffs to protect those onshored industries whilst you let them compete mostly with each other. Then in 30 years you can start transitioning back to a service economy but keeping the industry this time. That is the idea anyway. It won't work because of how normalized corruption has become. The nascent industries won't be forced to compete, they will buy monopolies so that they never become competitive on the world stage. From a working class perspective it is actually a horror show even if it does work, because worker protections would have to go to be competitive. But we aren't demanding accountability from either party on corruption, so it wont.

Comment Re: So, Tim... (Score 1) 333

Yeah Russell Vought wants everything back like the 50s, including our gdp. Seriously though, he does not care if the economy craters and stays bad for generations as long as male protestant Christians of European descent are in charge and the Paulian interpretation of the Christian bible is the law. It is basically the Taliban with a slick talker as a frontman to get them in the door. Next big protest is june 14. Don't count on it working out. That is what Venezuela, Turkey, and Hungary thought. Poland got out in the streets peacefully and turned it around. This isn't about conservative values, it is about a theocratic electoral autocracy. And we are already there, no democratic rating org in the world would call us a democracy if we got rated today. They would all say hybrid regime or electoral autocracy. It will be hard to get back to choosing between competent but corrupt politicians that want to look like they follow the law, but it is worth the effort.

Comment Re: the last in a long chain of evidence (Score 1) 111

There is also a lot of evidence that type 1 diabetes gets triggered by a childhood virus. A nun noticed kids with type 1 who got tb vaccines often stopped having type 1. She was called a quack and ridiculed until, posthumously the establishment medical community issued an apology and admitted there was likely something there. Figuring out how to reprogram the immune system would be huge.

Comment Re: the last in a long chain of evidence (Score 1) 111

They aren't entirely wrong, they just drew the wrong conclusion. We have plenty of evidence of autoimmune issues arising from various viruses. We haven't put enough research into them as a whole. We studied this one more and found more of the problems it causes. If we knew the entire gdp cost of the disease burden due to the common cold, or particularly mono, we would be devoting far more resources to stopping them all.

Comment Re: Prof here (Score 1) 160

If they want to pass their orals, they could have an AI test them as they go along, using only material up to what has been covered. It is probably as good a teacher on many subjects as the one they are paying for. The new skill they need is knowing what to prompt and how to verify what it is telling them. Especially spotting logical fallacies and unstated assumptions. AI is oddly bad at that. Probably because it was trained on billions of interactions by people who are no longer taught those skills.

Comment Re: Our future is being taken from us (Score 1) 125

This! I think ai should absolutely be a standard part of education, including recognizing when it is being used to target your emotional responses. The fact that so many people can't recognize the autocrat's playbook as it is so unsubtly followed is horrifying. The fact that it took this obvious instance for me to recognize so many previous instance is even more so. When I read old comments I made here in the 90s, the naivety is so embarrassing. My code from that time is less embarrassing, and that is saying something. If my government class had been more than explaining why our form was the best one, maybe it would be? Class project, design an electoral system to create 4 parties, one that will allow the tyranny of the majority, but be stable, and design one that will disguise oligarchy. What sorts of propaganda will work best on someone who feels inadequate about their skill level, and what type to appeal to someone overconfident in their skill level? What percentage of the population should a scapegoat group encompass to generate sufficient ire, without being large enough to risk empathy?

Comment Re: Trumptards (Score 1) 101

What have we seen that is evidence of this that couldn't also be explained by an inability to admit fault combined with overconfidence and an extreme vulnerability to flattery? He must have listened to advice at some point, from Cohn for instance? I wonder when and why he stopped, or if he just ignores things that don't line up with his agenda.

Comment Re: Trumptards (Score 1) 101

+4 insightful? I mean yeah I yalk to a lot of people trying to rationalize their vote, and even more who seem blind to this administration's misdeeds, but I wouldn't call it willfull. They have been emotionally manipulated. If you think you are immune to that then you share something in common with our president. I'm pretty sure propaganda experts like Putin are aware of their emotional weak spots and are vigilant against them being used. That is probably the only way I would recommend us voters be more like Putin, but it is an important one. The rounders quote is wrong, everyone at the table is a sucker, and it is the ones that don't recognize that, that will loose it all. Know what you want to believe, and what you are afraid to believe, and be very wary of any confirmation those things are true.

Comment Re: One day it's like a miracle, it will disappea (Score 1) 542

Seriously though, the ventilator was a mistake. Hcq too, but budesonide works for sure, go buy a nebulizer and an inhaler, or wait, i mean get an mmr vacccine, or just accept you are fleeting and not that important to society. The people with smallpox vaccine scars aren't wearing masks, not because they think they are immortal, but because they have seen worse and know humanity will go on.

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