makomk

35 ms·

361.
by makomk 4y ago
The thing is that during the last two years, governments have systematically shut down the actual productive parts of the economy that make stuff to fight Covid and tried to fill in the gap produced by printing and handing out money instead
362.
by makomk 4y ago
Monkeypox can transmit through non-sexual means, but it transmits poorly enough amongst humans that way that those routes of transmission cannot explain the current outbreak. I think there's other hints that this is the cause too, su
363.
by makomk 4y ago
Not really. There is not some fixed amount of money in existence and certainly not some fixed amount of wealth. Governments and banks create money as necessary to facilitate the actual economy in producing actual stuff, and as for wealth, w
364.
by makomk 4y ago
The oral polio vaccine has a small chance of paralyzing or killing people it's administered to, around one in a million if I remember right - this may sound harmless enough but polio's so rare that for a while it was a bigger caus
365.
by makomk 4y ago
It's not even really that the live version mutated to become transmissible, exactly - the live oral polio vaccine is reasonably transmissible through the usual fecal-oral route full stop. The problem is that as it spreads through a com
366.
by makomk 4y ago
Ultimately most of a grocery store's costs are going to be salaries and energy, either directly or at their suppliers, and the energy market is not good right now in terms of availability or cost. Also, if people hope to buy extra stuf
367.
by makomk 4y ago
The only deeply cynical part of this is the idea that it's some kind of nefarious plot to steal those wages back. It's not, it's a simple and direct consequence of the fact that in order for people to buy things with their wa
368.
by makomk 4y ago
The main non-mRNA alternatives were the adenovirus vector vaccines, which caused blood clots in young people - quite a few countries ended up withdrawing them from use in those age groups because of this. Novavax, which is a more traditiona
369.
by makomk 4y ago
The technology is not there for the grid to handle a whole bunch of excess solar energy during peak sunny days. We just don't have options for energy storage on the scale required. The usual approach of groups pushing for this is to ha
370.
by makomk 4y ago
Yes, that is really a Democrat position, along with opposing signature checks on postal votes, supporting sending out unsolicited mass postal voting forms, opposing removing people who've moved states from the electoral register on the
371.
by makomk 4y ago
In the case of elections, it's because one party has decided that making it as easy to vote as possible helps them win elections and so insists that election fraud does not exist and any protective measures are an attack on democracy i
372.
by makomk 4y ago
Yes. Specifically, pro-Democrat media and organisations have spent the last several years arguing that measures to make fraud like this harder, such as unregistering people who aren't living in that state anymore and checking ID when v
373.
by makomk 4y ago
Even most workers at big corporations are more like nurses and doctors than butlers and chauffeurs: the goods and services they produce ultimately go to ordinary consumers, not multi-billionaires like Jeff Bezos. The billionares get wealthi
374.
by makomk 4y ago
In particular, there's a fundamental constraint we need to remember: in order for people to buy things with their wages, those things must be produced. That is to say, it's not possible for businesses across the economy to just de
375.
by makomk 4y ago
Yeah, there was even a bizarre period prior to the last general election when the majority of the House of Commons was in fact opposed to Boris but didn't want to hold a confidence vote because they knew he'd win the resulting ele
376.
by makomk 4y ago
It's not actually a total gun ban even though American campaigners like to call it that - rifles are still legal to own and keep at home, with restrictions, and although under-18s can't buy them it's perfectly legal for them
377.
by makomk 4y ago
The baseline reality is that there is not enough fuel being produced globally to support people's current levels of consumption , for reasons that have nothing to do with energy monopolies in the UK. Years of environmental campaigning
378.
by makomk 4y ago
He didn't test the version of the extension that he'd built himself with 32-bit vscode, but the previous test with the prebuilt extension from VS Code Marketplace which didn't reproduce the bug must have been done using the 3
379.
by makomk 4y ago
It basically boils down to everything, but for example the post-Dunblaine total gun ban that US gun control advocates point to was actually a total ban on handgun ownership - when they've been pushing heavily on the idea that rifles
380.
by makomk 4y ago
The US anti-gun movement seems to be more a part of the culture war than something founded in reality or that could ever lead to a healthy culture around guns, unfortunately. They seem to particularly like pointing to the country where I li
381.
by makomk 4y ago
From what I can tell, Americans that are opposed to gun restrictions generally also think that "active shooter drills" are indeed a waste of time that just traumatize children for no real benefit other than the political gain of p
382.
by makomk 4y ago
The general assumption of politically active gun owners in the US is that any attempt to regulate guns is a back-door route to try and outlaw gun ownership. This seems like an accurate assessment of how US gun politics actually works. Even
383.
by makomk 4y ago
It's entirely likely that Australia's Covid rates had nothing to do with any particular action they took. Every Covid success story had exactly one thing in common: they're all in the same area of the globe, on the other side
384.
by makomk 4y ago
Not unless you're a NYT-level big player, and even those don't seem terribly keen on the idea. The fundamental problem is that advertisers want to know that their ads are being shown to actual people who are actually interested in
385.
by makomk 4y ago
The fundamental problem here is that when we chose to shut down society, most of the capacity that went unused is gone and cannot be brought forward into 2022 to fill in the gaps left behind. So for example, all of the teaching time that wa
386.
by makomk 4y ago
Germany kept on increasing their dependence on Russian gas imports by building Nord Stream 2 after the first invasion of Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, instead of diversifying their gas supplies. This was an intentional and knowing
387.
by makomk 4y ago
The generation isn't naturally massively distributed and resilient, that's the thing. Assuming that the grid will always be there and stable simplifies the problem quite a bit: all the inverters have to do is sync up with it and t
388.
by makomk 4y ago
That's something different, though. Money market funds are meant to be safe interest bearing investments: they're expected to give a small positive return on investment in normal times, and to be safe enough that people will at le
389.
by makomk 4y ago
Pretty sure that's well within the bounds of normal variation we'd expect between different locations within a major city. There's all kinds of weird microclimates in most cities, you really do have to compare like with like
390.
by makomk 4y ago
Yes. One of the fundamental principles of British democracy is that no parliament may bind its successors; any law they make can be overturned by a future parliament. Generally the main consequence of this is that companies aren't will

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