Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
@Gregnee I hate to agree with you, because that's where a lot of my ancestors come from. And I still hold out hope that one of these days it will be a member of the community of nations instead of an out-of-control toddler with a machine gun. But as it is now ... yeah, fuck Russia.
@Loukas Respect for tradition. [solemn nod]
@Loukas Seems like the answer should be "the blood of their enemies," but I guess they'd calmed down some by then. Er, the lymph of people who mildly annoyed them?
#Gatekeeping is never a pretty thing, so I'm sure you'll be upset to hear that the very first argument over who is really #goth happened 589 years ...
@Loukas If they were *real* goths, they'd have denied that they were ever goth at all.
Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.
Realistically, there is zero doubt that #Russia blew the #Kakhovka dam. Destroying dams with bombs or artillery is hard work, as the amount of effort devoted to it in WW2 demonstrates. #Ukraine most likely doesn't have the specialized resources for it, nor do they have any good reason right now. On the other hand, demolition of a dam you control, as Russia did until now, is ... not easy, but a whole lot easier.
And if you squint and turn your head sideways, it kinda sorta makes sense in the short term. The floodwaters will prevent any large-scale Ukrainian crossing, and do a whole lot of damage to densely populated areas that are mostly under Ukrainian control. Which fits perfectly with the Russian policy of destruction for destruction's sake.
Long-term, or even medium-term? Not so much. The #Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant will have to be shut down completely, and remain so until the dam is rebuilt. Even bigger, the dam and its reservoir provided most of #Crimea's water supply. Sustaining a long-term Russian presence there will be impossible. There just isn't enough water.
So what it boils down to is, RUSSIA HAS SURRENDERED CRIMEA.
They may genuinely not realize this yet. Thinking through the consequences of their actions has not been one of their strong suits, since about the third day of the war. But that's what it means.
Holy shit. Holy *fucking* shit.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-war-kakhovka-dam-destruction-russia-rcna87868
The usual disclaimer: this is promising, but don't count on great results.
If it works as advertised—*if*—it could be what #Theranos promised and so spectacularly failed to deliver. #Grail is using well-understood technology and (I think) large enough samples to make the claims for the #Galleri test believable, at least. And the #NHS (again, I think) doesn't have the kind of incestuous relationships with financially interested parties that helped #Holmes et al. get away with such fraud for so long. So I'm inclined to trust their reporting.
With that said, the usual #statistician's disclaimer applies: #multiple #testing is hard. So, for that matter, does the #medic's and the #biologist's, because there are multiple *kinds* of multiple testing going on here. The more you test, the more you will screw up.
I almost appended "it's like a law of nature" to that last sentence above ... but no, it *is* a law of nature. Unreasonable effectiveness of #mathematics something something.
#Cancer screening is important, and steady improvements in the field have already saved untold numbers of lives. I expect this will continue to be the case. So take this with cautious optimism. Pushing back the boundaries a little bit at a time, each small step representing another decade or year or month of life—it's what we do, every day. I want to believe.
"ToughVet." Okay, sweetie. I think I covered that here:
@trinsec It's an impressive trick, in its way. 😀
And now you know ... the rest of the story.
https://www.quora.com/Did-atheists-kill-the-dinosaurs/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3
#AlleyGuy is shouting, "I want fifteen dollars. You hear me? Fifteen dollars!" Now I kind of wonder if he's the paperboy from Better Off Dead all grown up. Inflation, you know.
There are ways the #executive class could make returning to the #office more attractive, of course—say by going back to the concept of an *office*, where everyone who works there has a room assigned only to them, with at least a desk, a chair, and a door they can close when they really need to concentrate. But that might give the #peasants ideas above their station, so don't hold your breath.
Really this may the one good thing to come out of #covid. The traditional office structure was already pretty rickety before the #pandemic: the #infrastructure was in place for half or more of "office" work to be done at home. I've been doing exactly that for coming up on four years now (!) and although I do sometimes miss the camaraderie of the #lab, for the most part I'm quite happy with the situation. I won't be at all sorry if the nineteenth crow turns out to be the coup de grace.
The new #nobility is going to have to adapt, and just like the old nobility, they don't handle that well. It's not about #money, and it never has been. It's about #power, and one way to make your power over your fellow human beings explicit is forcing them to be somewhere they don't want to be for most of their adult lives. #Duke #CEO and #Baron #MBA are quite reluctant to give that up. Things are going to be messy for a while.
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
Finally! We've been waiting since November of last year to share these amazing results and beautiful images with everyone. Our Cycle 1 JWST/MIRI images of the Fomalhaut Debris Disk reveals never before seen details of the inner regions of this complex exoplanetary system!
Daniel Dvorkin
boosted
This. Is. Amazing.
Montréal suburb Brossard has a traffic light in a school zone that defaults to red, and only turns green when an attached speed camera detects a car driving under the speed limit.
The light is on a 90-day trial, on a 2-lane residential street. Similar signals are widespread across Europe.
Before it was installed, average vehicle speeds of 40 km/h. But in the past week, average speeds have dropped to 29 km/h.
This is your erratically scheduled reminder that building rock #cairns when you're out #hiking is not a way to show your love of #wilderness, or a cute little addition to the #scenery. It's #vandalism at best, and gets much worse from there. Please stop.
https://www.google.com/search?q=environmental+effect+of+rock+cairns
@freemo Yeah, I think that's what it comes down to: there is no protocol for a US President attending a British coronation, because there's never been a need for it!
I'm not opposed to the *existence* of the monarchy. My father, who was born in England and grew up in South Africa when it was still part of the Empire, has pointed out that there's real value in separating the head of state from the head of government: all the patriotic foofaraw can attach to the throne while Parliament gets on with the actual business of governing. In the US we have a bad habit of attaching quasi-mystical significance to the Presidency.
But I do think it would be inappropriate for the President to go to any coronation, and the British one in particular. Of course the Revolution was a long time ago, and the UK and the US have been steadfast allies for over a century. Nonetheless, there are parts of our shared history I'd rather not see forgotten.
You might think #Republicans would understand why the #elected leader of a #republic doesn’t attend the #coronation of a foreign #monarch. Particularly when the republic in question established its existence by breaking away from *that particular* #monarchy. But apparently this is too much to ask.
Bioinformaticist / biostatistician, veteran USAF medic and Army infantryman, armchair paleontologist, occasional science fiction author, long-ago kickboxer, oldbat goth, vaccinated liberal patriot.
Joined Oct 2022
