zosima

36 ms·

211.
by zosima 4y ago
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote an extremely funny novel about Tontines, which are a variant of what you suggest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Box_(novel) Just like with life insurance, there is some opportunit
212.
by zosima 4y ago
Well, the constitution grants the judiciary branch the final say on all cases of legality. So I don't think it's very controversial that they also have the final say on the legality of the legislative and executive branch's d
213.
by zosima 4y ago
There is also an art of making opinion polls say what you want them to say, e.g. by asking a biased question, sampling a demographic known to skew a certain way or using a method that largely may exclude certain demographics. (E.g. internet
214.
by zosima 4y ago
Seems that caesium-137 is also excreted pretty quickly: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137 Still even though it's hard to find good numbers, and the average seems to be ~ banana / kg. I believe there
215.
by zosima 4y ago
What does not fit for consumption mean? Are there more ionizing radiation in a German mushroom or boar than in an average banana?
216.
by zosima 4y ago
There is quite clearly not even remotely 100.000 premature deaths from Chernobyl. The only cancer that clearly went up in immediate connection to Chernobyl was thyroid cancer, and that was in most cases very treatable. It's also unclea
217.
by zosima 4y ago
The biggest problem nuclear has is that it's too cheap and the fuel lasts too long. That means that the oil, gas, wind and solar industry has more money and interest in spreading FUD. On top of that the fear that has been succesfully d
218.
by zosima 4y ago
One reason, is that the lack of necessities in times of crisis is often due to hoarding. And these people selling at inflated prices are, perhaps, the worst hoarders. Second, they may have goods that can mean the difference between life and
219.
by zosima 4y ago
In Sweden there are plenty of labor laws. E.g you have to lay off workers in the opposite order they were hired. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagen_om_anst%C3%A4llningssk...
220.
by zosima 4y ago
Of course there is. But as far as I can tell nothing on this matter has been about building a non-corrupt Ukrainian state with functioning institutions. It has from the US side been (since many, many years) about influencing politics in ant
221.
by zosima 4y ago
I think you're missing that what is now being fought over is whether USA should have control over Ukraine or whether Russia should. I think you can be an anti-imperialist and not have a strong preference for neither USA nor Russia cont
222.
by zosima 4y ago
I think maybe you have somewhat idealized conception of the state of Ukraine before the invasion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Ukraine Both Ukraine and Russia have been dominated by a set of oligarchs si
223.
by zosima 4y ago
I disagree: 1. All cases of MS does not have to be caused by similar antibodies. 2. MS usually progresses through attacks. Antibody may only be present when an MS attack occurs.
224.
by zosima 4y ago
This is quite interesting as for a long time there has been some evidence that Benzodiazepine usage can increase the risk of Alzheimer's diseases and it has often shown up as a risk factor when doing large-scale database studies. Summa
225.
by zosima 4y ago
Well, if he was a sensitive soul he would have stopped what he was doing, long time ago. Just look at this thread.
226.
by zosima 4y ago
Elon gets attention because he is doing absolutely astonishingly amazing things. The appearance of indecisiveness and disorderliness is because he's doings things nobody has done before. And that's how that sort of thing looks.
227.
by zosima 4y ago
The difficulty of creating L5 autonomy and the provable impossibility of the halting problem are not comparable at all. There is absolutely nothing fundamental that makes L5 autonomy impossible, while the halting problem is provably impossi
228.
by zosima 4y ago
Nonsense. There was support for Soviet in parts of the intelligentsia, see e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five Orwell, had been or was still a convinced socialist, however he did not believe in soviet co
229.
by zosima 4y ago
The currency was pegged to ECU and so government + central bank was purchasing pounds to maintain the exchange rate (the central bank was not free from government influence at the time.) To do that, they borrowed $15 billion to a war chest,
230.
by zosima 4y ago
British GDP in 1992 was $1.2 trillion. $10 billion was therefore roughly 1% of GDP. That's a damn lot of money for a government and likely way more than daily volume of traded GBP (or GBP used in trade, on an average day). I think the
231.
by zosima 4y ago
1984 is obviously anti-totalitarian and definitely a manifesto for not giving government too much unbridled power. It was inspired, just like Animal Farm, by George Orwell's years spent in the spanish civil war, and the corruption of s
232.
by zosima 4y ago
This is what Soros himself said in an interview in New York Times, in 1992: "Our total position by Black Wednesday had to be worth almost $10 billion. We planned to sell more than that. In fact, when Norman Lamont said just before the
233.
by zosima 4y ago
Soros has been supporting a large number of NGOs since the early 1990:s at least. Many of the NGO:s have been actively working for mass-immigration, color revolutions in eastern Europe, drug-liberalization and a stronger EU. If you are agai
234.
by zosima 4y ago
Technically, that is not quite true. He sold $10 billion borrowed pound sterling that day, in collusion with others, which appears to have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Sure had the pound sterling been sound, that would n
235.
by zosima 4y ago
Don't worry, as this is not about child sex abuse anyway. The legislators know, from experience, that it's hard to argue against measures to protect children from predators, and so they are free to launch controversial and unaccep
236.
by zosima 5y ago
Well, we have seen how authoritarian repression of alternative viewpoints turned out, with the imprisonment of Galileo, execution of Thomas More, horrors of Stalin and Hitler and too many more to mention. And we have seen what immense impro
237.
by zosima 5y ago
A healthy society must have a diversity of opinion, and that includes being allowed to be against vaccination and expressing that viewpoint. The overton window is getting ridiculously narrow right now and it's definitely not for the be
238.
by zosima 5y ago
If blood samples from 2017 have similar number of positives as blood samples from 2019, then we can be quite certain that the positive tests (or test) from December 2019 were false positives. (Which I think is already the vastly most likely
239.
by zosima 5y ago
This is not blood samples that are positive for antigen, but blood samples that contain covid-19 reactive antibodies. Now, cross-reactive antibodies is a thing, so I wouldn't pay a lot of attention to these number unless they can show
240.
by zosima 5y ago
> Disagree. I don't like either Scala nor ES - but "const" is really confusing. It implies that whatever we store is constant, but it's not. I can store a mutable object and it changes whenever I want - only the refe

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