Daniel Dvorkin @medigoth@qoto.org

Via an old #USAF #medic friend: a picture from my much younger days. My head looks weirdly small. Perhaps I was hoping the jolt would blow it back up to normal size.

I can date this one pretty precisely. It's at the #RAF #Upwood #clinic, where I arrived in June 1990, and shaved off the mustache within a few months. Also, I'm wearing whites, which I only did at the Primary Care Clinic, where I was first assigned. In the Acute Care Clinic, where I was from October of that year on, we wore BDUs. So it has to be somewhere in that time frame.

That kid, he's not me. Better in some ways: energy, optimism, idealism, openness to new experiences. Worse in others: temper, stubbornness, a certainty of his own rightness taken to absurd extremes. It takes some growing up to learn the difference between opinion and truth. Uncle Sam was not always pleased with the process.

But I remember him fondly, and wish him well. Given the number of people who were close to him then and are still here now, I guess they do too. I'm glad.

Most school shootings are inexplicable to anyone but the killer or killers. This one may not be: https://twitter.com/xxclusionary/status/1640598560876920832

As soon as a friend sent me the link, before I even clicked on it, I just knew what it was going to be. Churches and church-affiliated schools covering up systematic sexual abuse of children is very nearly as common as the abuse itself.

Expect an intensification of the "groomer" rhetoric in the coming weeks. They still think they can cover themselves that way.

#church #school #shooting #schoolshooting #sexualabuse #molestation #grooming #conservative

Most likely I'm preaching to the choir by posting this here. But #covid has spawned more conspiratorial thinking than any other event I can remember in my lifetime, and that includes things like 9/11. So, in case it's useful for countering any bullshit you may encounter, here you go.

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-WHO-come-up-with-a-brand-new-virus-death-classification-procedure-just-for-covid-in-early-2020-What-was-wrong-with-the-pre-2020-virus-death-classification-procedure/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3

I was an #airman a lot longer than I was a #soldier. But I was a soldier first. There are not quite words for how much this pisses me off.

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2023/02/documents-show-air-force-leaders-shirking-their-close-air-support-responsibilities

Possibly the last time I'll give an honest, non-sarcastic answer to this kind of question. I've tried, for decades, and I'm just about done. Snark is practically all I have left. Consider this a brief flash of the old me.

I really doubt the questioner will pay attention, but maybe it will do someone some good. FOR ... THE ... LURKERS!

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Democratic-Party-hate-white-men-so-much/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3

The wheels of #Mouse grind slow, but exceedingly fine.

#Disney rolled over a lot quicker than I expected when #DeSantis took #ReedyCreek away. Gloomily, I thought that meant they were giving up—calculating that it was better to alienate some large part of their customer base than to pick a fight with a terrifyingly succesful #fascist politician on his way up the ladder. Now I have a different view.

This conference presents a huge challenge for #DeathSatan. If he tries to stop it, he's in for a massive court fight... and/or persuading Dinsey that it's finally time to leave #Florida, which could happen, and would be a massive blow to the state. Maybe even enough to lose him Florida's electoral votes in the 2024 Presidential election where he clearly expects to be a candidate.

If he doesn't, he looks weak. The #Republican #Party is hopelessly committed to #performative #masculinity. The slightest appearance of weakness on the part of #SqueakyRon will give Former #President #Babyhands all the opening he needs to win the pissing contest. Forget the general: #Trump gets the nomination and DeSantis is yet another also-ran.

Me, I'll just be over here making popcorn.

I will note that it's a deeply weird feeling for me to be backing a giant corporation against a legitimately elected government, however much it galls me to admit the latter. But strange bedfellows and all that. #Stalin vs. #Hitler: sometimes you gotta pick a side.

Do I have to explain *everything*?

https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Europe-defy-God-by-not-using-the-United-Statess-dollar-which-was-invented-by-Jesus-in-1776/answer/Daniel-Dvorkin-3

Scurry, my pretties, scurry!

DAMN IT.

#Bioinformatics life:

When working with #data from multiple #species, it is important to keep them separate. This is a particularly a problem with #human and #mouse data: we're pretty similar, big-picture-wise, with a lot of similarly named #genes that do similar things. So you want to make sure your species labels for each datum are clear and unambiguous.

Note to self: it helps if you label them "mouse" and "human" rather than ... say ... just to choose a random example ... "muman". Because trying to make *that* happen will get your funding yanked rather quickly.

A friend asks, "What is Neo-Gothic?"

The #Goths were a major geopolitical force from about 200 AD on, ruling much of the territory northeast of the #Roman #Empire, with a powerful and reasonably centralized government. Indeed, it was one of the few military-political entities in the world which could negotiate with #Rome on roughly equal terms. Today we know these people as the "elder Goths."

But around 375 AD, the #Huns crashed into the eastern edge of the #Gothic polity, bringing down their governmental and economic structure and driving uncounted refugees west. The Goths could at that point have been wiped away as so many other peoples had been in the Huns' ruthless march of conquest. Fortunately for them, the Eastern Roman #Emperor at the time, #Valens, gave them permission to settle along the Roman side of the #Danube, and they survived as a culture, albeit in a weakened state. Some commentators of the time claimed they were no longer truly Goths at all, but a new and lesser people, the "#Emos."

Of course they spent a lot of time being gloomy about this. Still, their fundamental nature was not to accept their fate passively: their cities may have lain in dust, but not for nothing was the refrain of one of their traditional songs, "I want more." So they rose, clad in leather and steel, and headed farther west ... conquering the Western Roman Empire in the process during the 5th Century. We divide them into #Visigoths and #Ostrogoths, but "neo-Goths" is a good catch-all phrase.

I hope this clears things up.

From electoral-vote.com: "If #Bragg was expecting a surrender in roughly 48 hours, especially from someone who lives more than 1,000 miles from #Manhattan, then he would likely have made contact with Trump's lawyers by this point. Although we suppose that, to make things easier, Bragg could meet #Trump halfway. Say, have him surrender at, oh, we don't know... #Appomattox Court House, VA? That would be an appropriate location, right?"

The whole post is great, but that last sentence is brilliant.

https://www.quora.com/Why-have-some-people-been-told-that-humans-evolved-from-chimpanzees-gorillas-monkeys-and-other-monkey-type-species/answer/Jake-Dickerman

Spot on. Right-wingers are like little kids desperately trying to get adult attention by saying dirty words they don't understand. If they get punished, they feel like they've accomplished something. If all they get is amusement, they'll cry and scream even less coherently.

The problem is, these third-graders are armed, which means we do have to take them somewhat more seriously. As little as possible is still a good idea, though.

For once, an #AI issue where I *can* speak with a certain amount of authority.

I've been hearing "expert systems outperform human #diagnostics, so pretty soon human #physicians will be obsolete" for a few years now. It's closely akin to "#airliners fly themselves these days, so what do we need #pilots for?" In both cases, people are paying attention to the best-case scenario with no understanding of the *enormous* number of how many and various the worse cases really are.

This is complicated by the fact that in most of #medicine (although not necessarily #emergency medicine, the author's specialty) and in nearly all of air travel, the best case is also the normal case. Most of the time, whatever is wrong with you can be diagnosed and treated. Almost all the time, when you get on a plane, you'll walk off at the other end of the trip as healthy as when you boarded. It's reasonable to expect those outcomes.

Not-best and not-normal cases add up really fast.

Without any false modesty whatsoever: as a #medic, I learned a truly impressive degree of clinical judgement. From the first moment I saw a patient, I had a pretty good idea of #diagnosis, #treatment, and #prognosis. (Sadly, if my initial call was "this one's not going to make it," I was almost always right. The exceptions kept me going.) I learned from the best—one of my mentors had learned *his* trade in rural Guatemala, where resources were terribly sparse and human judgement was the only line between life and death. He held back death for decades, and it came for him far too early. Gene Gibbs, RIP.

I can't code that. Neither can anyone else, and if they tell you they can, they're lying.

As a #researcher, I've done a fair amount of work in #clinical #decision #support (#CDS). The idea is simple, and valid: no human, or team of humans, can remember everything they need to know. There's simply too much knowledge for the brain to hold and recall on demand. Subtle relationships exist between disparate types of data that *nobody* knows, until we tease out the numbers. We're doing this, right now. It is saving lives and relieving suffering, right now.

The key word there is "support." Humans still absolutely, positively, 100% need to be in the loop.

Maybe that will change, someday. I'm not saying it's impossible, for two reasons. First, any time anyone says "computers will never be able to ___" they're usually proven wrong. Second, I don't want to limit my and my colleagues' imaginations. We need to stay focused, but it is a *good thing* for our reach to slightly exceed our grasp. That's how #science happens!

Just not this day, and not for many days to come. Right now, we need to keep muddling along. There's not much more human than that.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90863983/chatgpt-medical-diagnosis-emergency-room