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Anyone else seen this and might be able to find it?

Like @timorl says, might not be as comprehensive as I had hoped, but anything in this vein would be a good start.

timorl  
@pganssle I vaguely remember seeing something like this ages ago, a page calculating or at least presenting data about micromorts. I doubt it would...

Anxiety disorders aside, I think the point would be to have a bunch of these tables with standardized measures so that they can be easily compared.

The utility in the thing is to allow you to allocate your resources appropriately towards reducing or preparing for certain risks.

How much risk am I assuming when I drive a motorcycle vs. a car? How much risk when I drive a car vs. SUV? How risky is it to participate in a vaccine trial vs. potentially contracting the disease you’d be vaccinated against?

Since we’ve already eliminated a lot of the biggest dangers to people in modern life, we’re left with making a bunch of decisions that have very small incidence rates, which makes them extra hard to reason about without hard numbers.

@tost Interesting, I would think it would be a useful salve, because generally speaking being a modern human in a first world nation is remarkably safe and pleasant.

If anything we tend to over-estimate the probability and intensity of salient negative effects, and there’s no equivalent and strong bias towards under-rating the risks of things, so I would expect almost all revisions in your priors to be towards “I don’t need to worry about this.”

What brought this up today is that I’m thinking of signing up for this Lyme disease vaccine trial: clinicaltrials.chasemr.com/adu

is one of the worst states for Lyme infection, but baseline prevalence is still 0.035%.

I’m finding it very difficult to calculate the expected utility of participating in a vaccine trial for Lyme, given that I plan to do a good amount of hiking in CT in the summer, but I’m also good about wearing long pants and using tick spray.

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Does anyone else constantly wish for access to actuarial tables for everything?

What are my chances of getting Lyme disease if I go hiking 6x / month in the summer in CT? How dangerous is a motorcycle vs. bike vs. car?

I need a microcovid.org, but for everything.

Hummingbirds are returning!

It's easy and cheap to make hummingbird nectar:

1: Boil water
2. Dissolve sugar (1:4 sugar:water)
3. Let cool

Change every couple of days. Extra can be stored in the fridge for a few days.

I’ve heard here and there about a bird disease going around and that people should take down their feeders, but I can’t find any good up-to-date resources about what parts of the country (US) are affected.

Anyone know if there is a good website that will tell me whether or not I should take down my feeders, and when I should put them back up?

Interesting, Metaculus was overly pessimistic about the timeline for the COVID-19 vaccine, but not absurdly so considering that predictions closed on May 2020:

metaculus.com/questions/3860/w

How many people 11 months ago would have put even 25% probability of widespread vaccination by March 2021?

Also a good way to introduce them to being skeptical of the motives of supernatural beings.

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How to explain the Easter bunny to your children if you don’t want them eating so much candy:

“Yes, we know he comes every year to leave us candy. What we don’t know is what he takes in return…”

@pettter @codesections I think you may be thinking of Befunge or one of its derivatives?

@freemo Sorry I engaged, if you are going to fight me on challenging your hyperbole with petty semantic arguments, I’m not especially interested in having the discussion.

I was attempting to help you tone down your rhetoric by keeping it factual, but I don’t have time to try to litigate whether or not your misleading statements are technically true in some sense.

@freemo @swiley Similarly you can choose to not work at or patronize places that require a vaccine passport, no?

@freemo It’s disingenuous to suggest that this is unprecedentedly unsafe considering it’s certainly safer than the amount and quality of testing done / required for a large fraction of the time we’ve been vaccinating people, and probably more than even the fairly recent past, given the safety ratchet that the FDA imposes (they almost always make the requirements more stringent, not the other way around).

If you are going to engage in this sort of semantic argument, I’m going to have a hard time taking you seriously in the future.

@freemo Also worth noting that this is not exactly unprecedented, considering that many schools / school systems require up-to-date vaccinations for students.

@freemo I don’t think that’s right about this being the first vaccine in US history to bypass the last stage, considering that vaccination predates the existence of the FDA by over 100 years.

I bought a 3-pack of Chapstick a few months ago and I just finished using up the last one without losing or putting any of them through the dryer.

I’m mildly afraid to tell anyone, since those who know me will assume that this is an obvious lie meant as a distress beacon.

Not a bird, but when I was chasing down the Pileated Woodpecker, I came across this very sleepy squirrel and had to take a photo.

This was right around noon, so I’m guessing he had a big lunch…

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I also found this male and female Eastern Bluebird pair hanging around by a nest near the river.

I have no idea if it’s accurate, but in my head they are a breeding pair guarding or establishing a nesting location (though maybe they tried it out in college and it didn’t work out, so now they’re “just friends”).

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