rovolo

Fauci said the following on 2020-03-08: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/05/outdated-fauci-video-on-fa...

> When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.

> But, when you think masks, you should think of health care providers needing them and people who are ill... It could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need it.

He said that there's a shortage, and that he didn't trust that people would wear the masks correctly. I remember that most of the early anti-mask guidance I heard was claims that they weren't likely to prevent yourself from getting infected because: the mask would become an infectious surface; and people wouldn't handle the mask as infectious.

Opinions started to shift over March, and the CDC put out guidance on 2020-04-03 to wear cloth masks in public. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

> It is mainly to prevent those people who have the virus — and might not know it — from spreading the infection to others.

> U.S. health authorities have long maintained that face masks should be reserved only for medical professionals and patients suffering from COVID-19, the deadly disease caused by the coronavirus. The CDC had based this recommendation on the fact that such coverings offer little protection for wearers, and the need to conserve the country's alarmingly sparse supplies of personal protective equipment.

I used wikipedia for dates and sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_masks_during_the_COVID-19...

I agree that the time unit should be in the variable name. The code itself should do a good job of explaining "what" is happening, but you generally need comments to explain "why" this code exists. Why is the test advancing the time, and why are we advancing the time at this line of the test?

    networkTimeMs++; // Callback occurs after timeout

    timeSec++; // Advance time to check whether dependent properties update

    utcTime++; // Leap second, DON'T advance ntpTime

There isn't a clear trend to more taxes in the US (scaled to GDP). Federal tax receipts were higher in the 90s (17-20%) than the 00s/10s (14-18%). Local and state receipts have been basically flat at ~8.8%.

Federal: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

State & Local: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pltN

~60/year of <5yo Australian kids in the 90s, down to ~25/year in the 10s. That's a death rate reduction of ~3/100k, which is about the rate of <5yo deaths from cancer. 50% of the <5yo drownings in '93-'18 were in pools.

https://www.royallifesaving.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/00...

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/causes-of-death-in-childr...

I understand electrical and plumbing, but why does the HVAC need to be bigger/smaller?

The CA $950 threshold is when the theft switches from a misdemeanor to a felony:

https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...

In comparison, Texas has a $2,500 threshold for upgrading from a misdemeanor to a felony:

https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-def...

The "better ways" listed in this book were often worse at the metrics the old solution was targeting. They won out because they gained flexibility by loosening requirements. Personal computers were worse than minicomputers, but they were so much cheaper that they largely won out. The book is focused on the solution provider, not the consumer. The old providers lose out because they don't understand what the consumer values. OP is saying that the provider may be misunderstand the problem the consumer has when they offer a simple solution.

The generous interpretation of "suburban America" is that both the author and interviewee live in the suburbs:

> I grew up in Temecula, a California suburb

> his house in Laguna Niguel, in a trim suburban neighbourhood

But the project started off in an urban area:

> In the fall of 2004, Frank [would] drive through the darkened streets of Washington, D.C., with stacks of self-addressed postcards

I think though that "suburban" is playing the same role as "middle-class". Despite the technical definition, I think both terms imply everyday, normal, boring, "real" Americans. I agree this usage is weird and I wish people would stop using "suburban" this way.

Euros were introduced in 1999, and the preceding "European Currency Unit" (just for accounting) was introduced in 1979.

I found it a lot easier to understand the harmonic and geometric averages when I learned about the "generalized f-mean". Many averages are arithmetic averages of a transformation of the value. "f" refers to the function which transforms your values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-arithmetic_mean

- The geometric average is the arithmetic average of the logarithm. It places emphasis on the ratio between numbers, rather than the absolute difference.

- The harmonic average is the arithmetic average of the multiplicative inverse. It averages values by a constant numerator rather than denominator. For example, the average fuel economy of multiple vehicles makes more sense per-distance, so miles/gallon should be rewritten as gallons/mile.

- The (RMS) root-mean-square is the arithmetic average of the square. Electrical power is proportional to the square of the amperage or voltage, so AC current and voltage uses the RMS average to make the power calculations correct.

Taking the numbers from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626192...

- Diesel has a peak efficiency of 40% but an average efficiency of 20-25% (depending on the type of driving)

- Gasoline has a peak of 35% and an average of 16%–20%

- Battery has a peak of 85% and an average of 80%

JFYI, scare quotes are also indicating the it is "the literal language used". The quotes are added to say that you are quoting literally what other people/the culture uses, but that you disagree with how that term/phrase is used.

You're correct about it being mandatory:

> At the left front designated seating position (driver's position), a warning system that activates a continuous or intermittent audible signal for a period of not less than 4 seconds and not more than 8 seconds and that activates a continuous or flashing warning light visible to the driver for not less than 60 seconds (beginning when the vehicle ignition switch is moved to the “on” or the “start” position) when condition (A) exists simultaneously with condition (B) ...

> (A) The vehicle's ignition switch is moved to the “on” position or to the “start” position.

> (B) The driver's automatic belt is not in use, as determined by the belt latch mechanism not being fastened, ...

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/part-571/section-571.2...

This report [1] is specific to "Firefighter Arson", so they're looking for things to screen for during hiring for firefighters. The section you'll be interested in is on page 20: "PREVENTION OF FIREFIGHTER ARSON". They list some actions departments have taken: background checks for arson; requiring an affidavit the applicant hasn't conducted arson; "scared straight" lectures on the consequences of being jailed; and screening firefighters with a questionnaire.

But yeah, the profiling section some sound like a way to pathologize arson. I found the motivation section and case studies more interesting. The only corroboration from the case studies is for the age; there's no evidence included for the personality traits.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20190811142354/https://www.usfa....

"White male, age 17–25" is an entire trait. "Homosexual" is a *part* of a trait: "Alcoholism, childhood hyperactivity, homosexuality, depression, borderline personality disorder, and suicidal tendencies". It's significant because of the other descriptors it's grouped with in that trait. It would be weird to have "homosexual" as a trait on its own, but it's obviously weird to group it with these other descriptors in a single trait.

Why does a city need ~100 L3 chargers per km2? People don't need to drive as far within a city, so even home L1 chargers should handle most city residents needs. The L3 chargers seem most useful on highways exiting the city.

2016 means you're talking about ST3, and 2039 means you're talking about Ballard [1]. It looks like the date in ST3 for Ballard was originally 2038 [2], so it doesn't seem delayed that much *yet*.

That said, I'm not sure large-scale transit projects are too comparable to electric infrastructure. The ST1 project had a lot of delays due to disagreements about where the rail line would go, and the cost of purchasing land [3]. It's a system designed to move people to places, so a lot of people have opinions on which places the system should go. By contrast, people mostly care that enough electricity is getting delivered to where they live, and don't really care how it gets there.

[1] https://www.soundtransit.org/system-expansion/west-seattle-b...

[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/sou...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Link_light_rail

Foucault was working in Tunisia from 1966-1968. HIV is thought to have spread to NYC in '71, and SF in '75 which is where Foucault probably was infected. AIDS was first clinically described in '81, and Foucault died in 1984 from AIDS.

> Isn't 'th' just the aspirated version of 't'?

'th' is only an aspirated 't' for loan words in English. Most English words pronounce 'th' as the fricatives /θ/ or /ð/.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th_(digraph)

"Thyme" is odd because it used to be spelled "tyme" in Middle English (1066-1400s). I assume it was changed to 'th' to be more similar to Latin and French. Something similar happened to "island" (iland) and "isle" (ile) where a silent 's' was added to make the words closer to the Latin "insula".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/thyme

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/isle

> The relevant outgroups animating Afrikaner nationalism aren't the Zulu ... It was the perceived "threat" of racial integration driven by English liberals

The article compared "South African whites and South African blacks". It sounds like you're comparing Afrikaners and the English?

--

The article links "narcissism of small differences" to the wikipedia page which says:

> [It] is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other.

I don't think this even slightly describes the "outgroup conflict" in South Africa. Furthermore, I think that Scott using this as an example minimizes the sources of conflict, e.g. Apartheid, because the rest of the article is solely about outgroup hatred.

How were the differences between the colonial SA Afrikaners and the local SA Zulu smaller than the differences between the Yugoslavs and the Zulu, other than proximity?

Yeah, this line of argument is a perfect example of the "Motte and Bailey" fallacy. The structure of this argument works just as well if you replace "intolerance" with "segregationist" or "misogynist". The only takeaway I have from this argument is "it's easier to condemn things which you disagree with". There isn't any discussion of whether the intolerant action is actually intolerant or harmful.

---

Digression, this is a pretty audacious way to minimize Apartheid.

> South African whites and South African blacks ... So what makes an outgroup? Proximity plus small differences.

Every single human conflict can be described as "small differences" because humans are very similar to each other. Also, it's harder to be in conflict with people far away from you.

From section IX of the article:

> ... Sure enough, if industry or culture or community gets Blue enough, Red Tribe members start getting harassed, fired from their jobs (Brendan Eich being the obvious example) or otherwise shown the door.

> Think of Brendan Eich as a member of a tiny religious minority surrounded by people who hate that minority. Suddenly firing him doesn’t seem very noble.

> ... When a friend of mine heard Eich got fired, she didn’t see anything wrong with it. “I can tolerate anything except intolerance,” she said.

The WSJ article is behind a paywall so I can't double check this, but you can have a 99% accurate test with a 20% misdiagnosis rate. The difference is that 99% is per-person, and 20% is per-positive-result. A rare condition will have more false-positives relative to true-positives than the test accuracy would indicate.

It's a bit easier to understand if you think of the extreme case: if the disease is completely eliminated than all positives are false-positives.

This site is the “orange site”. The comment is saying that the gray text comment behaved like some people on this site behave; a behavior which people associate with this site. I think it can be described as overly nit-picky, but that’s an incomplete description.

When you say "past 30 years", I can only assume you blaming the issues on the end of Apartheid in SA. What do you think the Apartheid government was doing right? What do you think the dissolution of legal Apartheid did wrong?

Specifically, after about a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Are reposts ok?

> If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.

This site's default theme is orange.

JFYI, the "Unknown Unknowns" quote is from before the invasion (2002-02-12). It was deflection on whether there was evidence of Iraq building WMDs or of cooperating with e.g Al Qaeda.

> Q: Could I follow up, Mr. Secretary, on what you just said, please? In regard to Iraq weapons of mass destruction and terrorists, is there any evidence to indicate that Iraq has attempted to or is willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction? Because there are reports that there is no evidence of a direct link between Baghdad and some of these terrorist organizations.

> Rumsfeld: Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.

> And so people who have the omniscience that they can say with high certainty that something has not happened or is not being tried, have capabilities that are ...

https://archive.ph/20180320091111/http://archive.defense.gov...

I'm not sure what you mean by this. The Eastern Interconnection is far larger than the Texas Interconnection and it's connected via AC. Are you saying that the Eastern Interconnection has inefficiencies due to its size? Or are you saying that the Eastern Interconnection isn't fully synchronized somehow?

I tried reading this IEEE article about the time the Eastern and Western Interconnections were connected into a synchronous system (1967-1975) to learn more about the difficulties with scaling interconnections. It mentioned frequency oscillations causing voltage variations close to the East-West connection (p11), which sounds like the issue you're describing. If that is the issue though, then Texas isn't the size limit for a grid because the Eastern and Western grids exist and are far larger.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=8594689