recovering_rationaleist
No bio...
User ID: 1768
recovering_rationaleist
13hr ago
Thank you for this data! Hospitalizations look like a COVID dip, rather than random. I agree with you that deaths suddenly spike in 2021. Infections oddly high only in 2023, but as you said the data is only preliminary. Guess it is worth while keeping an eye on.
I suppose food borne disease is probably dominated more by kitchen errors rather than by food processing contamination issues: stuff like improperly washing hands between meats and vegetables, or cutting watermelon before washing it.
recovering_rationaleist
13hr ago
Oh. Thank you. Your link contains a much better (and more hopeful) figure. It appears this whole post was founded on a misunderstanding.
recovering_rationaleist
20hr ago
No, sorry, only data from 2017 onward is currently published at the FDA site link.
recovering_rationaleist
22hr ago
I've seen speculation that US food recalls are up. FDA provides all food recall information on their website, downloadable as an Excel file, dating back to 2017.
So I did a quick analysis by year, and it looks like recalls are indeed way up under Biden / since Covid:
| Year | Number of Recalls |
|---|---|
| 2017 | 3 |
| 2018 | 21 |
| 2019 | 43 |
| 2020 | 91 |
| 2021 | 119 |
| 2022 | 310 |
| 2023 | 308 |
| 2024 (YTD) | 290 |
| 2024*12/11 (extrapolate to full year) | 316.4 |
So what changed from 2021-2022? I've seen rumors on Reddit that Trump deregulated inspections, but can't find any mention of this on the FDA website. Has there been a drop in inspections, a drop in factory safety enforcement, or are recalls happening more aggressively?
recovering_rationaleist
6d ago
The experts were just so wrong about peak oil, weren't they?
Kind of. The increasing and more volatile price of oil motivated the development of fracking technologies, which have a higher upfront cost but about the same marginal cost as previous wells, allow previously unexploitable fields to be made exploitable, and allow wells to be turned on and off with macroeconomic realities. So increasing prices signalled need, and the technology was developed to fill that need.
Which is probably a good estimate for the trend that will occur in other domains of resource exploitation, as long as we allow price signalling to work.
As a side note, it looks like gasoline prices are almost monotonically decreasing when adjusted for inflation. I suspect this is because the price of energy is basically what sets the value of the dollar. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/gasoline-prices-adjusted-for-inflation/
recovering_rationaleist
6d ago
- Current existential threats: AI, pandemics, nuclear proliferation (and Lybia, Ukraine, NK, Iran show the incentives for/against a country pursuing nuclear weapons)
- The rise of global trade: semiconductor markets, shipping lanes (compare to Roman Roads), global financial markets / how and why the USD is the global currency
- Global telecom and instantaneous communication
- Geopolitical balance of power, the fall of Russia as a power and the rise of China (as economic powers). Since ~2017, chinese GDP has been higher (PPP) than US GDP.
- Chinese demographics (and the big question of economics in a shrinking population), China and Taiwan/Hong Kong (back to its origin in opium wars)
- Chinese dependency on the West: China imports fuel and food, exports manufactured goods.
- US military build-up in the Pacific vs. South China sea as a barrier to US containment
- Hybrid warfare
- Not current issue, but a fun thing for me to think about: "how to raise a country into an economic miracle" (Korea) vs. "how to destroy a country" (Venezuela, Gosplan). The relevant point I would emphasize is that you need some unit of value (money) which signals the amount of resources which go into a product, and which signals how many resources people are willing to give up for that product. This distributed computation cannot be efficiently centralized!
- Within the US, the financialization of corporations and rising power of private equity/monopolies: downfall of Boeing (funneling money into stock buybacks), PE firms buying real estate and setting up local dental monopolies, market power being abused to add junk fees and raise prices (Ticketmaster), etc.
recovering_rationaleist
22d ago
I have a policy of not telling anyone who I actually voted for. That said, here are my notes for the rest of the third-party candidates:
Cladia De la Cruz (Party for Socialism and Liberation)
- Single-payer healthcare
- Pro-reparations (too left wing)
- "seize the forgive all student debt", "Fight for a socialist future" (going to destroy the economy)
- "cut military budget 90%" (going to destroy the Empire) and "lift sanctions" on "Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, North Korea and Iran" (going to lead to nuclear proliferation)
- Take over fossil fuel companies (might actually solve climate change, but good luck doing that without a military.)
- No mentions of freedom or freedom of speech, but I could get behind "disband the NSA"
- Claims on her website that US median income is $31,000, which is a good 50% lower than the actual number given by the US census bureau in 2022.
Cornel West (Justice For All party)
- '"Free Speech and Whistleblower Protections"
- Making voting day a national holiday is great, but vote by mail and nothing about voter ID means coercion is going to be more rampant.
- Nothing about nuclear or AI in platform
- Green new deal: nationalizing fossil fuel industry, end new oil drilling (would take a cut out of climate change, but doesn't address foreign emissions)
- Moratorium on False [climate] Solutions might address foreign emissions, but I doubt it.
- Nothing about monopolies on platform
- Streamlining legal pathways for immigration would help my family.
- Abolishing ICE, demilitarizing the border, upholding asylum laws, and demilitarizing the police/criminal justice reform would probably harm my family
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (We The People party)
- "dismantle the censorship-industrial complex"
- "We will return the intelligence agencies to their proper role as protectors not violators of liberty."
- "Install honest, competent leadership throughout the federal bureaucracy, agency by agency"
- "replace corporate-friendly agency leaders with reformers and whistleblowers"
- "Make the agencies transparent to public view"
- Removing corporate influence from government hits pretty much all my major issues.
- "Make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy" (the only serious proposal that I have seen for student debt that makes any sense)
- universal public housing
- term limits in congress
- break up monopolies, end stock buybacks (good for national competitiveness)
- equalize school funding
- focus medical research on chronic disease prevention
- "Protect our Environment from Corporate Corruption and Contamination"
- "Dismantling US Imperialism", "unwinding empire" (would destroy international trade, probably send us into another dark age.)
recovering_rationaleist
24d ago
To steelman Marn'i Washington's likely mindset, Marn'i was probably hopped up on Oct 14-ish news articles portraying "Trumpers" as "planning to shoot at FEMA workers." This is not Marn'i's fault: the journalists covering this were sensationalizing what looks like just a few claims of threats against aid workers. Marn'i was merely brainwashed by the information made available.
recovering_rationaleist
1mo ago
Yup. I figured the "Wisconsin Green" party made it obvious, but most responders didn't read that carefully.
Thank you so much for the good-faith tips!
I've been (slowly) going through the third-party candidates in Detail, scoring them by (freedom+transparency)*competence*weighted issues. Terry was indeed hard to find info on. Stein is out, because she's provided a laundry-list of "human rights" which she cannot possibly deliver on (Free Tuition, Free Housing, Free Medical, and no nuclear, but Declare a Climate Emergency....). And .. that's about as far as I've gotten.
I'm glad I researched her, though, because I came across an interesting story of how the Democratic secretary of State of Nevada colluded with the Democratic Party of Nevada to keep Stein off the ballot. It serves as an interesting counterpoint to the argument that Democrats only play dirty in response to Republicans playing dirty, since the Green party was victimized by Dems' dirty antics. (tl;ds: Secretary of State tells the Green Party to use an updated petition to put a candidate on the ballot, which petition doesn't collect information on signatories' eligibility to vote. The Democratic Party of Nevada sues to challenge the Green Party candidate's inclusion on the ballot under the argument that the law requires the petition to collect eligibility to vote information to be valid, and now Stein is not on the ballot in Nevada.)
recovering_rationaleist
1mo ago
Thank you. Haven't gotten involved in local politics yet. Will have to start attending meetings.
Dear Motte, please help me place my vote.
I really want to support the Democratic Party. Biden's FTC, EPA, and NLRB all seem to be working in economic directions which will make my life and the life of my children better: open markets, cleaner air, better working conditions. I can't help but notice that Trump's previous court picks tend to work against my goals of regulating business, increasing vacation time for my family, and limiting the EPA's attempts to regulate fossil fuels.
But voting blue has some tradeoffs. Some of these I'm aware of, but they are less relevant to me: Immigration is high and crime is up, but immigration and crime are intensely local, and my locality is pretty safe, with lots of rich donors and its own competent police force.
I'm going to have a family soon. I would like my child to be able to enjoy a carefree childhood, without needles in the parks and bullies in the schools, and without the chance that they are brainwashed into values that won't give me grandchildren.
But then things happen which force me to reevaluate and acknowledge that I cannot support the Democratic party. For example, this exchange during the VP debate (Transcript from Matt Taibbi):
VANCE: You yourself have said there’s no First Amendment right to misinformation. Kamala Harris wants to use…
WALZ: Or threatening. Or hate speech.
VANCE: …the power of the government to use Big Tech to silence people from speaking their minds. That is a threat to democracy that will long outlive this political moment… Let’s persuade one another. Let’s argue about ideas and come together afterwards.
WALZ: You can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. That’s the test. That’s the Supreme Court test!
Matt makes the argument that Walz got the crowded theater analogy backwards, but even more than that what rings alarm bells in my head is the phrase "Or hate speech."
What do you mean hate speech isn't protected by the first amendment? How do you think the market of ideas is going to work?
This exchange was the last straw for me, and convinced me that, however much it may harm my short-term personal interests, I cannot cast a ballot for Walz and the group of people who think like him. No matter how shitty life might get without the EPA or FTC working in my best interest, it will get much more shitty, much faster if donors to the Democratic party (NPR listeners?) get to define contrarian thought as "hate speech".
So here are my options for presidential tickets:
- Donald J. Trump / JD Vance (Republican)
- Randall Terry / Stephen Broden (Constitution)
- Chase Russell Oliver / Mike ter Maat (Libertarian)
- Jill Stein / Rudolph Ware (Wisconsin Green)
- Claudia De la Cruz / Karina Garcia (Party for Socialism and Liberation)
- Cornel West / Melina Abdullah (Justice For All)
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. / Nicole Shanahan (We The People)
Any ideas who has the most "Grey Tribe" values and best policies?
Important issues to me, in order of importance as far as I can tell:
- Freedom of expression
- Transparency in government
- Competence in government and making decisions without corruption
- Quantitative approaches to existential threats (climate change, nuclear proliferation, AI engineered viruses, ASI, etc.)
- Maintain international trade (i.e. maintain the empire)
- Increase economic competition (anti-monopoly)
- Labor rights (anti-monopoly)
- Reduce everyday mortality: healthy lifestyle, healthy food, healthcare access, traffic safety, crime, etc.
- Improve everyday quality of life: clean water, clean air, low prices, YIMBY
- YIMBY and environmental law (abolish zoning but enforce strict laws against pollutants).
- Immigration: let in those who follow the process, but stop allowing "refugees" and people who overstay visas (currently, overstaying a visa is the fastest path to a relative's green card.)
Edit: formatting of candidate list
recovering_rationaleist
11mo ago
Yeah, I was thinking of Terra. Not really into crypto.
recovering_rationaleist
11mo ago
That just about matches with my mental model of the social dynamics, and although I would blame housing prices for the Covid-era drop in birthrates, it is likely that the longer-term drop is more about education prices.
The expressions they use would be literally translated as "gold spoon," "silver spoon," "bronze spoon," "iron spoon" for upper, middle-upper, and middle, and lower class, respectively, although this take on wealth has been memed to include diamond, wood, plastic, and dirt.
recovering_rationaleist
11mo ago
That's all true, and housing prices have leveled off in some neighborhoods, so the end of the bubble may be nigh. The next step is that housing speculators push for increased immigration and increased social atomization to boost housing prices and to cover the domestic labor shortage caused by boomers retiring and millenials refusing to do blue-collar work. This will boost the anti-immigration party, which is on the left in Korea.
Every society has their "golden path": study, employment, marry, have kids, retire, die. In Korea, the golden path is very well-established: study, get into a university, graduate, get a white-collar job, get engaged, buy a condo, marry, move into the condo upon returning from the honeymoon, and have kids 9 months later. Note two things: first, marriage is scheduled shortly after the couple buys a condo, and second, that most of the people who deviate from this golden path (traditionally) will have been low-status, low-class, or of lower impulse-control. Deviations from the path result in a loss of social status, a lot of awkward conversations with friends and relatives, and sometimes even the loss of legally-mandated benefits (which benefits are rather small to start out with).
So the failure to have kids is tied up in a cultural resistance to deviate from the path, as well as with inability to buy flats.
The average price of a flat in Seoul doubled from 2018 to 2021.
There isn't much more to be said. Any dual-income, median-wage-earning, responsible millenial couples (1) who were saving up to get married discovered mid-pandemic that the prices on flats were rising at roughly 5x the rate at which they could put away money. (2) Half the young professionals I know were hodling their savings into cryptocurrency and stonks, because nothing else had a high enough rate of return to keep up with housing (and then Tether blew up).
The government is unlikely to do anything about housing prices: popping the housing bubble would devastate the economy, stop a bunch of construction projects needed for increasing housing supply, devastate the wealth of the political class, and wipe out the wealth of retirees who were putting their money into housing funds and are very politically active. Much easier to shrug shoulders about subsidies for kids are not working and there is nothing that can be done.
(1) Young white collar couples will not earn median income in Korean society. Millenials in their 30s might, but in their 20s they are working overtime gratis for a chance at getting promoted.
(2) This oversimplifies, omitting the interest rates on jeonsae mortgages, which are a whole 'nother level of fucked up: the tenant takes out a mortgage to put down a deposit for a two-year housing lease, where the deposit is capped at 80~90% of the value of the property. The landlord keeps any interest made when investing the deposit, and when the two-year lease is over may renegotiate and increase the deposit amount. So the tenant needs to save up the money for an upcoming increase in the deposit while also paying back for the interest on the deposit to the bank. At some point around 2021 jeonsae increases of $100,000 were not uncommon.
O'Toole is close to the mark in surmising that the low birthrate is housing related, but Korean houses haven't gotten smaller in the past 30 years, so the declining birthrate doesn't come from "feeling cramped".
Instead, buying a flat (usually a condo in a high-rise) is the cultural norm in Korea upon marriage, and to marry without a flat lined up is to be subject to a lot of awkward questions. Imagine trying to avoid answering 200 variations on "so where are you going to live?" Anecdotally, the price/availability of housing has delayed every Korean marriage I am aware of. People really don't marry unless they can afford the property or win a housing lottery.
So the question O'Toole should be asking is not "why small houses?" but instead "why expensive houses now?" Part of that price could be the dependence on high-rises, but it doesn't quite have explanatory power: High-rises are more expensive to build per unit floorspace, but they are less expensive per family unit than detatched single-family homes. Construction costs cannot explain why the average sale price of a condo in Seoul is now more than one million dollars, in a country where the median income is around 50,000 dollars. The cost of housing is instead set by two other factors:
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Everyone wants to live in Seoul, because of the metropolis network effects: there are more jobs, more services, better infrastructure, more retail/entertainment options, better hospitals, and better schools in Seoul. Consequently, moving to Seoul is high-status: "마소의 새끼는 시골로, 사람의 새끼는 서울로." - "Send your kids to Seoul, and your foals and calves to the countryside."
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The housing market is dominated by speculation. For the past 15 years hodling Seoul apartments has been more lucrative than any other investment. People who have cash have been putting it into housing, people who don't have enough cash to buy flats outright have been putting it into housing "stocks" and taking out mortgages which release money if they win a government-run housing lottery (protip: for an edge in the lottery, get your disabled relative to apply, quietly buy the flat from them after a few years have passed, then flip the flat for profit). Due to a change in policy around 2020, even the mortgage route has recently became infeasible for the middle class:
Korean housing policy has been a disaster. The long and short of the linked article is that the last administration attempted to control housing prices by increasing property taxes and making it harder to get a mortgage, but this priced the middle class out of the market in Seoul and Incheon, and speculators who have cash have continued buying, with the price of condos doubling from 2018 to 2021.
My read on this is that the government is either dominated by or beholden to the speculator class. What remains to be seen is why the people seem resigned to the situation, instead of seeking alternatives. In a sane world, housing prices increasing beyond measure would incentivize more construction and more people seeking alternate housing arrangements to raise their families. To a certain extent, more construction is happening, with Seoul set to increase the limit on high-rise height and developing new satellite cities. But until then, few people seem willing to take the prestige, economic, or stability hit of moving to the countryside, trying to raise children in rental flats, or trying to raise kids in their parents' homes. Instead, young people of middling means have been moving abroad to have kids.
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
That's an interesting comparison. While the historicity of Jesus is debated downthread, the Gospel accounts IMO have a very valid purpose: they can teach the reader how to be a charismatic psychopath who motivates his followers! devout leader of a church: (1) Gather some small number of people who worship the predecessor religion, which contains some prophesies. (2) Find an interpretation of the predecessor religion or religious text in which the prophesies refer to things that happened to you and your group. (3) Act and teach as Jesus did in the Gospels, with a focus on the corruption of and persecution by The World (4) Die according to your prophesies and (5) be rememebered forever!
Experimentally, we have evidence this works for many groups. Most of them don't make it to (5) because they don't make new prophesies of their own, but some do.
So the natural place to go here from gender ideology is to ask whether gender ideology provides a sufficient set of social tools to build a movement, or whether the ideology sources those externally.
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
Licensed Nurse Practitioner
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
But it sounds like you can't just have any CPAP machine: it has to be one your doctor prescribes, and it has to send your usage data to the government. That rules out generic devices and locks you into the hell that is new regulated internet-connected medical devices, maybe even with a subcription model for quarterly reports that get sent to a physician. Looks like the top result on Amazon (not FDA approved and doesn't connect to the internet) is $899. Multiply that by at least 3 if you are purchasing through a reputable medical device supplier with insurance.
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
The report [1] makes it clear that CDC didn't want to test anything. Their official position is that a fridge with an "Ebola" label isn't worth testing for ebola unless the vials in the fridge are themselves labelled "Ebola", and "there is no evidence" [2,3] that this company imported any pathogens. I mean, CDC "[i]ssu[ed] an Import Permit advisement letter to Prestige Biotech to ensure they know the Import Permit Regulations for importing infectious substances into the U.S.” and “[i]ssu[ed] a Federal Select Agent Program advisement letter to Prestige Biotech informing them of the requirements for possession, use, and transfer of select agents and toxins if the entity decides to possess them.” No response, so obviously Prestige Biotech has not imported any infectious substances (/s) [4].
You can't make this shit up. The only reason we are still alive is because nobody has tried any serious bioterrorism, not because the CDC would be able to thwart a motivated and intelligent bioterrorist.
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/Reedley-Bio-Lab-Report.pdf [2] https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence-is-a-red-flag [3] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kfsn/PDF/Reedley-Bio-Lab-Report.pdf, p. 14 and p. 40. [4] ibid, p. 40.
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
I bet they got them on the cheap in a yard sale.
I would bet not, unless it was in the spirit of teens who put "biohazard" stickers around their bedrooms.
One researcher I work with has a story about moving a plate reader into a BSL3 lab to do research on Covid-19 in 2020. The research project has finished and they could use that plate reader elsewhere, but it will probably stay in the negative-pressure zone until the lab itself is decommissioned.
N=1, but this makes me extremely skeptical that one can buy a used fridge from a BSL4 lab, especially one with an "Ebola" label still on it.
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
My impression is that Covid was a signal for Boomers to retire. Now all those service jobs which used to be filled with Boomers are staffed by nobody, so labor is hard to find and more expensive. As a concrete example, an aquaintence was a nursing assistant and dropped from full-time to retired in May of 2020. They have since returned to work, but only around 4 hrs/wk, and only in 1-1 care for clients they like, rather than the more economically efficient (but more demanding) group care. Social security is paying about what they used to make; why would they subject themselves to the stressful job?
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
The difference between "occupation" and "allies" or "mercenaries" is that you can politely ask "allies" or "mercenaries" to leave, and they will pack up and go, whereas once you are occupied you lose that ability forever. Guantanamo Bay is occupied. Korea is not.
In the 1950s one could plausibly say that the US was occupying Korea. US troops based in the center of Seoul propped up dictators that benefited US interests. However, fifteen years ago the democratically elected Korean government asked the US to get its troops out of Seoul. The US did. Now there is a large swath of vacant land between the old city and Gangnam. The US is still in Korea, but critically the US garrison in Korea is maintained on the request the Korean government. The relationship is mutually beneficial: the US gains a base of operations counter Chinese expansion, and the Koreans gain a tripwire against North Korean expansion. In particular, the Koreans are willing to pay to keep the US troops garrisoned: when Trump hinted at leaving, the Korean side fussed and then increased their side of the bill. (Japan picked up the whole bill right away without a fuss, because Japan knows it is in their interest to pay to stay in the Pax Americana.) So Korea and Japan willing to pay to be "occupied"? That's not a military occupation by any definition I know. (I don't know anything about Germany but suspect the situation is similar.)
recovering_rationaleist
1yr ago
I looked up the page for "evolution" on both of these sites, then looked up "Gamergate", "Gaza," and "Trump" on Infogalactic vs. Wikipedia.
Conservapedia goes ad hominem in the second paragraph of "Evolution", stating that the majority of the vocal proponents are atheists and agnostics, and proceeds to go into 12 paragraphs of skepticism, including in there the whopper that "The fossil record does not support the theory of evolution and is one of the flaws in the theory of evolution." (Sources: "creation.com" and "annointed-one.net"). Combined with the failure to properly explain what evolution is, this bias makes it useless as an information source.
Infogalactic, in contrast, takes the text for the "Evolution" and "Gaza" articles straight from Wikipedia. Gamergate, as one may imagine given the Vox Day connection, is a completely different article from that of Wikipedia: the Wikipedia article emphasizes the "harrassment campaign". The Infogalactic article emphasizes the revealed corruption in journalism, but does touch on harrassment allegations.
Finally, the "Donald Trump" article: Infogalactic auto-redirects from "Trump" to "Donald Trump". Wikipedia redirects to "Trump (disambiguation)". The intro to the Wikipedia article injects POV in where it doesn't seem appropriate (differences with Infogalactic emphasized):
Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican nominee against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote.[a] During the campaign, his political positions were described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. He was the first U.S. president with no prior military or government experience. The 2017–2019 special counsel investigation established that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to favor Trump's campaign. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist and many as misogynistic.
The corresponding infogalactic paragraphs:
Trump won the general election on November 8, 2016, in a surprise victory against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, and commenced his presidency on January 20, 2017. He became the oldest person to assume the presidency (surpassing Ronald Reagan), until Joe Biden in 2021, the wealthiest person ever to assume the presidency, and the fifth to have won election while losing the popular vote, though his supporters claimed there were irregularities.[1] His political positions have been described by scholars and commentators as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. In the first year of Trump's presidency, the economy improved significantly[2], but progressive opponents strongly criticized his direct and plain-spoken personal style. With no significant scandals or international events to report, the democrat media focused on unsubstantiated allegations that Trump's election campaign team had colluded with Russian intelligence agencies to influence public opinion[3][4]. The official investigation was eventually closed, with no evidence of the conspiracy theory[5].
Infogalactic definitely has a bias, but it isn't leaving as many details out selectively. I might start preferring Infogalactic now. However, from the change log it looks like there is only one active contributor?!
Huh. I must have ignored that part of the original site. Thank you!
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