bob_neumann

Re:Trapped Under Trucks on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:33PM (#36335326)

Not a truck driver, hardly ever even met one. But boy, do I agree with the trailer manufacturers. The trailers aren't the problem. These tiny modern cars are incredibly dangerous. There ought to be a regulation against little bitty cars.

Re:Trapped Under Trucks on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @09:30PM (#36335294)

I'm so thankful for these large trucks that bring so many good things to us all, so inexpensively.

My life has never been improved by government regulators spending my money for me on automotive things that they think I can't live without.

Not seatbelts, not car seats, not airbags, not crumple zones, CERTAINLY not CAFE standards, not eliminating diesel passenger cars, et cetera, et cetera, ET CETERA.

LEAVE ME ALONE. If I want to risk my and my family's lives in the equivalent of a 40's era jeep, then shake your head at my foolishness, and laugh at my demise, if such turns out to be the case.

Regulators have long-since become a bunch of career busybodies looking to justify their existence by spending my money.

I want it to stop.

Having said that, I don't think humans are capable of the balancing act necessary to watch both your cellphone and the road. So I support "hands-free"/anti distraction traffic laws. Zero cost, greatly increased traffic safety. And that's the real cause of the increase in these kinds of fatalities.

So, "No, I'd rather not (further) increase the cost of road transport by adding a bunch of expensive new anti-underdrive regulations to the existing too-heavy burden of vehicle regulations. We should aggressively enforce anti-cellphone/anti-distracted driving laws instead."

Re:Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the nex... on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @11:25PM (#31188414)

Vaccine. Mandate.

It cost something like 15% of the nursing workforce, people who were already Covid immune, since they had worked the Covid front lines from day one.

But we pretended the vaccine helped stop the spread of Covid. It doesn't. And we pretended the vaccine had no meaningful risks. It does. And we pretended that natural (recovery) immunity didn't exist. It not only exists, but it's far stronger than anything a vaccine can do.

And yet we pretended anyway. And now we're paying the price. Pretending makes for bad public policy.

There are a lot of things we need to stop pretending about.

Re:Ask HN: Long-form info-dense videos on YouTube you would recommend ... on Saturday December 11, 2021 @07:24PM (#29525699)

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yXRcZ04IFJaQuQlnRFUU...

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yXRcZ04IF5T99iStpbCj...

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yXRcZ04IEZqlddjFac3G...

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL16yXRcZ04IGCZ0I9iUXS3o...

I love how he explains his thought process and explains the principles that guide decision making.

I can watch him for hours.

Re:How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvacci... on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @04:04PM (#29323527)

Https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/dataset/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland

Re:How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvacci... on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @04:00PM (#29323469)

I'm speaking specifically of the age 10 to 59 age group. For the last 6 months that age group, the vaccinated are almost twice as likely to die of any cause than the unvaccinated.

Re:How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvacci... on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:59PM (#29323441)

No, the death rate in the ONS data from England is age adjusted. So among the same aged cohorts, the vaccinated are more likely to die than the unvaccinated. Almost twice as likely for the last 6 months straight.

Re:How death rates from Covid-19 differ between vaccinated and unvacci... on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @03:58PM (#29323428)

I noticed that they're only evaluating the covid-19 death rate. Not the overall death rate. Based on the latest data from England's ONS, in the 10 to 59 year old category, the vaccinated overall death rate is almost twice as high as the unvaccinated death rate

Re:Willingness to look stupid on Thursday October 21, 2021 @06:18PM (#28951509)

True story:. I'm a techie and a nerd and I've always been near the top of my class. One of the things that I enjoy is it really dry humor. And one of the ways I can get a laugh out of people is by stating something that is obvious as though I just figured it out. Or intentionally making massive understatements. Like if I just broke my arm and I would say something like, "I have found that breaking your arm is unpleasant."

When you say it around people who are generally quick witted, it takes a second for them to grok what you're saying and then they figure out that you're cracking a joke and then they smile, usually laugh.

But years ago I found myself working as an aircraft mechanic. And my cohorts whom I rode around with were very blue collar in language and culture, and several of them had been chosen as "mechanic" because they hadn't performed that well on an aptitude test.

So one day I made one of my famous observe-the-obvious funny statements, and one member of the group whom I'm pretty sure was one of the low aptitude scorers, looked at me with obvious disgust and said, "You must be one of the dumbest people I've ever met."

He didn't understand why I started howling with laughter.

Re:The anonymous meta-analysis that’s convincing people to use ivermectin on Wednesday September 22, 2021 @10:52AM (#28616980)

Utter Pradesh. 241 million mostly impoverished people. 13% of the population is vaccinated. But they're handing out prophylactic doses of ivermectin. And something has essentially eradicated Delta variant Covid.

If it's not ivermectin, what is it?

Re:How Did Marriage Become a Mark of Privilege? on Monday September 25, 2017 @01:00PM (#15332063)

How incredibly frustrating: The correlation between marriage and the general wellbeing of a middle class income is well-known. It leads folks like Ben Shapiro and Larry Elder to say, "if you want to be middle class, 1. don't have kids outside of marriage, and 2. keep some kind of full time job." Makes perfect sense to me. However, the leftist NYT, reading the same correlation, instead comes to the conclusion of, "Oh look, now those rotten rich people have even taken MARRIAGE away from the poor people!" If that ain't fake news, what is?

Re:Build a Better Monster: Morality, Machine Learning, and Mass Survei... on Thursday April 20, 2017 @01:52PM (#14159063)

I find this pretty entertaining: The author laments the outcome of Brexit and Donald Trump, and points to the tech world as the source of the problem. But Facebook/Google/Apple and the rest of Silicon Valley are all in lockstep with the author. (Peter Thiel being the only exception.) So the author's problem is not that Facebook/Google created Trump or Brexit. It's that EVEN the mighty Facebook and Google couldn't stop it. It turns out the the folks in flyover country VEHEMENTLY DISAGREE with the elites in the tech sector. And these regrettable unwashed masses came out and voted. Perhaps these deplorables can be convinced of the superiority of secular humanistic socialism. Perhaps not. But blaming Facebook or Google or "Fake News" for these folks' long-held beliefs and desires is either delusion or intentional misdirection.