Paul Ganssle @pganssle@qoto.org

Sesame Park doesn’t allow you to bring a Leatherman into the park, but they don’t mind me walking around with these Howitzers?!

Clearly security theatre…

For two days in a row these vultures were hanging around in the same trees behind my house for hours at a time.

That’s not ominous at all…

#birding #birds

Noticed this response after I wrote a program that pulls all humans with a birthday in Wikidata with repeated queries filtering by birthday… 😅

Anyone have a good (open) corpus or generator of human names that covers a good amount of the different types of names people can have?

Preferably tagged with ethnicity or nationality. The names don’t have to be real, just representative.

@eumiro@fosstodon.org maybe?

Got my corvid shot today. My toolmaking abilities seem to have improved a little, but I’m also starting to feel an uncontrollable urge to mob hawks and owls…

If anyone’s curious how I landed on this: I signed up to do it because while the incidence of Lyme disease is fairly low in absolute terms, the rate of severe adverse effects from phase 2 trials is also very low.

But it turns out the trial is closing on Monday, so I’d need to get the first shot then, and they want 2 weeks between getting the Lyme vaccine and getting the COVID vaccine — and I’m scheduled to get the first COVID vaccine shot on Monday.

I could put off the COVID vaccine for 2 weeks, but I believe that would have practical downsides for me, and I don’t think that the practical benefits of getting the Lyme vaccine aren’t high enough to overwhelm that.

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.

What brought this up today is that I’m thinking of signing up for this Lyme disease vaccine trial: https://clinicaltrials.chasemr.com/adults-lyme-disease-vaccine-clinical-trial-0-1

#Connecticut 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.

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 http://microcovid.org, but for everything.

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?

#birds #birding #wildlife

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

https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3860/when-will-a-vaccine-targeted-at-the-2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-be-administered-to-at-least-10m-people/

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.

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…”

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.