base698

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Posts posted by base698


  1. True Believer is pretty great and it was written in 1951 with a reflection on the social causes of WW2.

    > In Germany and Italy the new poor coming from a ruined middle class formed the chief support of the Nazi and Fascist revolutions. The potential revolutionaries in present-day England are not the workers but the disinherited civil servants and businessmen. This class has a vivid memory of affluence and dominion and is not likely to reconcile itself to straitened conditions and political impotence.

     


  2. 16 hours ago, billvon said:

    Agreed, and I haven't heard of any cases of that happening.  (Of course, if you listened to FOX News, you'd think that the medical community has a class all kids have to take to convince them they are the wrong gender.)

    The incidence of gender-affirming mastectomy increased 13-fold (3.7 to 47.7 per 100,000 person-years) during the study period. Of the 209 patients who underwent surgery, the median age at referral was 16 years (range 12-17) and the most common technique was double-incision (85%)

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9555285/


  3. 1 hour ago, kallend said:

    suppose other OECD nations don't have overdoses

    > It is estimated that at least 6,166 overdose deaths involving illicit drugs occurred in the European Union in 2021 (5 796 in 2020). This total rises to an estimated 6 677 deaths if Norway and Türkiye are included (6 434 in 2020). This number is provisional and is an underestimate, due to reporting delays and other limitations in reporting capacity apparent in some countries.

    Is 6166 smaller or larger than 100,000?  Population of EU is larger than the US.  Assume the underreporting makes it double it's still an order of magnitude less.


  4. 36 minutes ago, normiss said:

    Or any reference to the number of comparative death numbers, which I thought was the intent.

    I still have yet to see anyone commit a mass overdose in a public environment such as a school.

    American gun culture, ignorance, and freedumbs. yay. 

    Homicides are comparatively constant only jumping 30%.  Overdoses have tripled (300%) since 2018 30k to over 100k.  In the same time frame as the life expectancy decline.  While homicides have an effect it's not comparable to overdoses.   Homicides only went from about 15k in 2017  to 20k in 2020. 

    If you throw in an extra 70k 22 year olds dying by overdose in their mom's bathroom to the 2.7 million yearly deaths that would lower the life expectancy almost 3%.  

     


  5. 17 hours ago, kelpdiver said:

    this didn't age well....

    Bitcoin is up like 280x from start of this thread. 

    The defi stuff has really gone to shit and definitely has not aged.  All of the dollar backed defi give interest less than Treasury bonds at this point and seems like a pool goes broke every month.

     


  6. 1 hour ago, billvon said:

    It only appears so at the time.

    In MLK's times the same argument was made.  The woke people of the time were crying wolf.  Didn't black people have the right to vote?  Didn't they have the right to not be enslaved?  They have their section of the bus, whites have their section of the bus, that's 100% perfectly fair.  What more do they want, other than to shove interracial marriage down our throats and sit where they're not supposed to on the bus?

    In the 1980's - same argument for gay people.  The woke crowd was clearly insane, calling for more gay rights.  Gays have all the rights straight people have!  A straight man can marry a straight woman; a gay man can marry a gay woman.  Exactly the same rights!  What more do they want, other than to destroy traditional families?

    Nowadays we understand why those were issues.  The woke people of the time (MLK, Rosa Parks, Harvey White) were called all the same names - but time and history has vindicated them.  I'm on their side.

    Do you feel you are creating a racial injustice when you eat a taco?  Do you believe a society where most cultures stay in their lane by not eating each other's cuisine results in more equity and understanding between cultures?


  7. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1596083744728928257

    Quote

    I am neither conventionally right nor left, but I agree with your point. The woke mind virus has thoroughly penetrated entertainment and is pushing civilization towards suicide. There needs to be a counter-narrative.

    I see woke/SJW is more of a crying wolf phenomena.  "Donglegate" would be my favorite decade old example: getting two people fired for making a comment between themselves privately at a conference.  Or, a white person eating tacos "appropriating".  

     


  8. On 11/23/2021 at 8:11 AM, gowlerk said:

    If you are going to insist on calling "woke" a religion, then it is just as valid to consider your "anti-wokism" a religion as well. There goes your claim to be an atheist right out the window.

    Woke as a religion was an idea developed by Curtis Yarvin in 2007.  It caught on with a circle of reformed libertarians turned neoreactionaries.  

    Bannon and other modern conservatives that ended up in the Trump circle and a few conservative think tanks have neoreactionary ideology as  the center.

    Specifically, ultracalvinism (which I have also described here and here) is the primary surviving descendant of the American mainline Protestant tradition, which has been the dominant belief system of the United States since its founding. It should be no surprise that it continues in this role, or that since the US’s victory in the last planetary war it has spread worldwide.

    https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/06/ultracalvinist-hypothesis-in/


  9. 30 minutes ago, billvon said:

    Very true.  And if criminals/well meaning but careless people/idiots start killing tens of thousands of innocent people a year by forcing them to drink rum and Cokes (including thousands of children) then yes, you would absolutely see people trying to regulate such people more stringently.

    They are killing 12,000.  Half of which are gang violence.  Only if you include suicides.  Other countries have higher suicide rates.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gun-deaths/

    Think about all the free hospital capacity if we outlawed coke though.  Those billions spent on diabetes could be used to cure kids 


  10. On 10/8/2021 at 7:44 PM, kallend said:

    When homemade zip guns kill 40,000 American a year like gun owners do with their guns (a rate per 100,000 far higher than any other western nation) I expect there would be some restrictions.

    You exhibit all the characteristics of a troll.  One of our resident right wing trolls has gone quiet lately.  I wonder. . . . . . . . 

    Alcohol kills about as many or more if you count cancers.  Doctors and pharmaceutical companies kill far more from medical mistakes. Coca cola about an order of magnitude more.  Even if you include suicides like your 40K number is doing.  

    Can we ban coke?


  11. 12 minutes ago, olofscience said:

    Honest question, why Fauci? Of all people to hate on, why him? It seems just bizarre.

    He's been the figurehead since the beginning.  If you get to be the highest paid government official you also have to take ownership and responsibility for your actions and the actions of your org.  That's how leadership works.

     


  12. On 11/2/2021 at 4:47 PM, Westerly said:

    Just drove by a NorCal station. Premium was $7.39 a gallon. Just the cost of food increased 20% in the last few months. Rent is up 35% over one year.  Mind you this is coming from an already expensive cost of living as baseline. Who could have saw that coming…..(everyone

    > The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.

    Screenshot_20211104-070014.png


  13. 6 minutes ago, olofscience said:

    It is what it is. You didn't say "approximately" or "around", you said "97%". You also said he repeated it dozens of times - so you didn't just double down on your error, you multiplied it (at least) 12 times.

    Yeah because I'm not going to dig up every headline where he was quoted. I mispoke because I saw that clip a weeks ago when it first went viral.

    My original question was around the idea someone could call any covid vaccine the most effective ever.  Almost every vaccine I'm aware of is better.  

    The stated high effectiveness no booster littered the media on March and April.  Whether it was 90% or 99%.  That's much different than 40%-60%.  If you want to quibble over a mistake I made with 3% cool.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

    Des Pfizer have an incentive to get everyone to buy their product on a recurring plan?


  14. 4 minutes ago, olofscience said:

    That's an outright lie - I watched the link and he said:

    • "quite effective"
    • "highly effective"
    • "extraordinarily efficacious...94-95% for mild to moderate disease"

    Nowhere in the clip did he say 97%. So not dozens of clips - zero clips. The rest of the video is just various media headlines.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/04/30/covid-vaccine-fauci-urges-americans-to-not-skip-second-shot.html

    Here he says 94%.  Outright lie is strong language for a 3% difference.

    Considering it's more like 40% at the end of the five month window. Anything in the 90s seem more like the lie.  


  15. 9 hours ago, billvon said:

    That was Pfizer - not Fauci.  (And the Pfizer vaccine was 97% effective against the strains it was developed to protect against, not against strains that arose after it was developed.)

    Here's what Fauci actually said in an interview in Dec 2020:

    "Well, the answer is unless you get the overwhelming majority of the country vaccinated, and protected, and get that umbrella of what we call herd immunity, there's still a lot of virus out there.  So just because you're protected, so-called protected, by the vaccine, you should need to remember that you could be prevented from getting clinical disease, and still have the virus that is in your nasopharynx because you could get infected.  We're not sure, at this point, that the vaccine protects you against getting infected. We know for sure it's very, very good, 94 percent, 95 percent in protecting you against clinically recognizable disease, and almost a 100 percent in protecting you for severe disease."

    Which was true in Dec 2020.

    June 2020, Fauci: "The best we've ever done is measles, which is 97 to 98 percent effective.  That would be wonderful if we get there. I don't think we will. I would settle for a 70, 75% effective vaccine."

    He was asked if such a vaccine would get us to herd immunity if only 2/3 of the population took it.  "No.  Unlikely." he said.

    Dec 2020, Fauci: "I would say 50% would have to get vaccinated before you start to see an impact.  But I would say 75 to 85% would have to get vaccinated if you want to have that blanket of herd immunity."  (Note - we are now at 58%) "Once we get there, if in the subsequent months, April, May, June, July, we get as many people vaccinated as possible, we could really turn this thing around before we get towards the end of the year."

    Again, true.  And again, we didn't get to 75%.  We're not even at 60% yet due to the anti-vaxxers.


     

     

    Ok. Here's dozens of headlines and clips of Fauci saying it would be 97% effective. https://mobile.twitter.com/joshfontanilla/status/1449184261811154949

    Fact check using the claim he said it would be 100% effective against covid from March for comments on CNN in December https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9996141232


  16. 19 hours ago, Westerly said:

    They are more effective than predicted, a lot more effective. They were one of the most effective vaccines ever developed in human history actually. The problem is 45% of the entire US population is still unvaccinated and probably only 25% of the world population is vaccinated. That's kind of a problem when trying to get to herd immunity... If all this antivaxxer bullshit would cut the shit and get with the program, the virus would be extinct in the USA by now. I hope the vaccine mandates and restrictions for the unvaccinated keep piling on. The more pressure to get people to listen to science instead of Facebook, the better.

    There are dozens of clips of Fauci claiming 97% percent effective and saying we'd have herd immunity by summer. 

    How is 45% effective and constant boosters the most effective vaccine in the world?


  17. 2 hours ago, billvon said:

    According to the right, people who don't think racism is funny are liberal identity-obsessed cancel culture warriors trying to erase the past, just because they think old comedies like Little Rascals are somewhat racist - and not that funny.  You state sentiments similar to that all the time.

    If you have started to turn away from that - good for you!

    From the director of Airplane!

    https://www.commentary.org/articles/david-zucker/wokeness_destroys-comedy/

    > Or when they pressure writers to remove jokes that are otherwise perfectly offensive. As a result of these fear-based decisions, some of the best contemporary comedy minds are abandoning laughter in favor of admittedly brilliant but serious projects such as Joker, directed by Todd Phillips, and Chernobyl, written by Craig Mazin. These men collaborated on two of the Hangover pictures, which struck gold at the box office. Phillips summed up the general plight of the comedy writer when he said, “It’s hard to argue with 30 million people on Twitter. You just can’t do it. So, you just go, ‘I’m out.’”

     


  18. On 9/24/2021 at 9:03 AM, billvon said:

    So natural immunity is a crap shoot.  You may become immune to critical antigens, or you may become immune to junk antigens.  The one advantage here is that you typically get immunity to several antigens, not just one.  So if those several include (say) the spike protein you're in good shape.

    When they designed the vaccine, they wanted to target the one thing that would be hard for the virus to change.  And since it was only one antigen that would be presented, testing and approval could be a lot more straightforward.  Seems to have worked, given the rapid testing, rapid approval and good outcomes with the vaccines.

    "Immune to junk antigens" still means you have more opportunity to stop the infection instead of relying on a single one.