Ranvier
@Ranvier@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Benny 😍😍😍 4 months ago:
I ate the onion on this one for a second.
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
Re read, and stop setting up straw men. I criticized teaching seven year olds to shoot. Not teaching actual gun safety.
I said it’s sad that we have to have the “heroes program” to teach pre schoolers about active shool shooters, because gun nuts don’t allow real gun controls or solutions.
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
Stop for one second, re read the conversation, and the link. I’m criticizing teaching 7 year old kids to shoot, not criticizing teaching actual gun safety. That was a straw man you set up to knock down.
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
Teaching kids to use guns doesn’t save kids’ lives. If you want to teach em to stay away from guns, that they’re deadly, they shouldn’t touch it and should tell an adult right away go ahead.
Teaching kids to use guns in the name of gun safety is like saying if you don’t teach a kid to drive what’s to stop them from getting hit by a car.
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
Already in the comment, click the links.
www.safekidsinc.com/hero-program-overview
Here’s where it goes through their curriculum per grade level including pre schoolers.
It’s not teaching pre schoolers to use guns, that was the other link (for 7 year olds and up).
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
The one I linked specifically mentions shooting afterwards…
But yes if guns are at home they should be locked and totally inaccessible to kids. Teaching single digit age kids about guns is not a substitute for that, but of course I’m not saying you shouldn’t teach your kids that they shouldn’t touch guns and what they can do.
- Comment on Rock Eagle Flag 4 months ago:
Kindergarten? Ridiculous. They gotta be at least 7.
- Comment on Tesla recalls most Cybertrucks in US over windshield wiper, exterior trim issues 4 months ago:
I guess it vaguely looks like this one in terms of the large flat plane in the front. Though it’s blade runner, so it’s all grungy like pieces are falling off and it’s all rusted and junk. Wait maybe cyber truck was inspired by bladeunner.
Doesn’t look much like a lot of other cars in the movie though.
- Comment on "Theory" of Evolution (SMBC) 5 months ago:
I get the impression there is not model for why sometimes thousands of base pairs can fuck off with no impact, and sometimes it changes the organism unrecognizably.
No there’s many known reasons that can happen. Here’s just some of them, but I’m the end it all comes down to understanding that genes code for proteins, little molecular machines. Sometimes there are multiple copies of genes that code for similar proteins or even the same protein, so losing one or even more doesn’t really do anything as there’s more where that came from. Sometimes there are genes that used to be important but no longer have a role or were made redundant, and are free to sedit. If a gene codes for a protein called an enzyme, sometimes a change in the active site that binds the chemicals for the reaction it assists might be catastrophic, but a change elsewhere doesn’t do much because it’s not as necessary to the function of the protein. Sometimes changes even result in the a similar amino acid or the exact same amino acid getting put at thag spot (since the genetic code has some redundancies, a different combo might still end up being the same).
Many genes code for proteins called transcription factors. Transcription factors help control expression of many other genes, some of which might also be transcription factors that in turn affect other genes, etc. This can create huge cascades. For instance there are things called hox genes that are very important for creating a cascade that leads to the formation of different body segments, and differentiating the different body segments. Mutations in these genes can be devastating, in some animals leading to the dissappearance or redundant addition of whole body segments.
There is tons more to learn of course on specifics in terms of evolution, genetics, and molecular biology of course. I don’t think it’s comparable to gravity though, which we seem to have a fundamental gap and irreconcilable theories.
At least coming from a background of life sciences personally, it seems to me evolution is probably better understood than gravity. I think a better comparison to gravity in the life sciences might be abiogenesis (how pre life conditions give rise to life to begin with). Once life is going, evolution, that we have a ton on. Not that we know nothing about abiogenesis, but that it’s a difficult outstanding problem.
- Comment on To put life into perspective 7 months ago:
There’s no one that can make the estimate accurately right now. Any calculation like that is going to rest on lots on many wild estimates and unknowns. Happy to look at it if you have a source though.
- Comment on To put life into perspective 7 months ago:
We’re working with an n of 1 basically. If you’re talking about the drake equation, many of those terms are wild estimates that we simply don’t know the answer to. In the course of astronomy history when we’ve assume uniqueness about earth or our cosmic situation we’ve generally been wrong. Unfortunately the vast distances between stars make an estimation of life in the universe difficult with current technology.
But there’s septillions of star systems in the galaxy with billions of years for life to happen. Intelligent life has happened at least once because we’re here. It would be utterly shocking if we were the only intelligent life out there.
- Comment on To put life into perspective 7 months ago:
That would be very surprising if it were true, considering the incomprehensively vast numbers of stars and planets out there.
- Comment on unsure why we are surprised lol 7 months ago:
I’d say more broadly the legal and political system works against any organizations that threaten the status quo, but yes America’s attitudes toward communism have been pretty obvious throughout the twentieth century. I just took issue with the idea that political parties or idealogies are illegal in and of themselves in the US, constitution still manages to protects some things.
- Comment on unsure why we are surprised lol 7 months ago:
Someone better tell these people they all could be arrested at any moment!
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA
No but seriously it’s an unenforceable junk law that no one has bothered to take the time to repeal that was never even really used in the first place. I mean, the communist party runs candidates for office to this day. Someone finally tried to use it in 1972 to keep a communist candidate off the ballot and a federal district Court promptly ruled it unconstitutional.
- Comment on Apple changes App Store rules to allow retro game emulators globally | TechCrunch 7 months ago:
Thanks again EU!
- Comment on Quantum Internet: No One Needs This 7 months ago:
From the applications section of the Wikipedia article on quantum entanglement:
Entanglement has many applications in quantum information theory. With the aid of entanglement, otherwise impossible tasks may be achieved.
Among the best-known applications of entanglement are superdense coding and quantum teleportation.[85]
Most researchers believe that entanglement is necessary to realize quantum computing (although this is disputed by some).[86]
Entanglement is used in some protocols of quantum cryptography,[87][88] but to prove the security of quantum key distribution (QKD) under standard assumptions does not require entanglement.[89] However, the device independent security of QKD is shown exploiting entanglement between the communication partners.[90]
Sci-fi media likes to constantly misconstrue quantum entanglement as allowing for faster than light communication so that they can have faster than light communication in their story. But as far as we know, faster than light communication is impossible.
- Comment on Do straight lines and flat planes exist in nature? 8 months ago:
I’m with you, I was mostly joking. This whole question just hinges on definitions of “straight line” and “flat plane” anyways.
- Comment on Can you un-smart a smart tv? 8 months ago:
They’re not even really available anymore. There’s some but they’re more meant to be directly sold to businesses, and often lack features in addition to costing much more. Easiest thing to do is get a smart TV and just don’t let it connect to the internet.
- Comment on Do straight lines and flat planes exist in nature? 8 months ago:
Unfortunately (fortunately?) the space they’re traveling through is curved. It was a good attempt though neutrinos.
- Comment on The FTC isn’t happy with Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard layoffs 9 months ago:
FTC is doing its job and has been fighting this from the beginning. Need the courts to do their job and side with the FTC.
- Comment on Texas firm allegedly behind fake Biden robocall that told people not to vote 9 months ago:
Don’t worry, they’ve received the most severe of all punishments: a sternly worded letter.
- Comment on Google News is indexing and promoting websites that immediately rip off others with AI clones of their articles. These websites are absolutely littered with Google ads. 9 months ago:
Periodic reminder to please directly subscribe to quality news sources to help fund good journalism. Especially local newspapers which have been really struggling. They are often the only ones holding your local elected officials accountable or reporting on them to any degree.
- Comment on working at a hospital: should I remain in the room watching a patient until he takes a certain medication? 10 months ago:
If a patient doesn’t want to take it, they just say they don’t want to take it, no one is force feeding people or calling security. Patients refuse medication all the time for many different reasons. In this example, the nurse should just document the patient refused and why, notify the doctor what happened, and continue on with their work. Not stand there in an hour long staring contest until the patient takes it.
It’s very important the medical staff know what things you have and haven’t actually taken. If it’s a medication you really need, your doctor will probably come and explain why refusing is a bad idea. If people don’t like the plan, don’t want any treatment, or don’t want to stay in the hospital, they can just walk out and leave. It’s a hospital not a prison. Your doctor may just ask you to sign something just to document they explained to you why leaving is a bad idea.
- Comment on murder 10 months ago:
Poor point of comparison, lol.
snopes.com/…/donald-trump-fifth-avenue-comment/
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters, OK? It’s like incredible.”
-Donald Trump
- Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices? 10 months ago:
You’re not wrong that it’s the profit margin that tells the story, and you can’t tell just from the nominal amount alone.
But average profit margins in the United States have reached a record high percentile not seen since the 1950’s. So it’s not just the dollar amount that’s gone up for corporations, it’s the margin percent that’s gone up too.
- Comment on Are MRNA vaccines any riskier than other vaccines? 10 months ago:
It wasn’t exactly “fast tracked,” a little misleading phrase (not helped by the official name of the operation called “warp speed”) that I think makes people more nervous than they need to me. This kind of implies they didn’t go through the same testing as other vaccines. They have gone through the same stringent criteria as any other vaccine at this point. A lot of what was done to speed things up was the government subsidizing and risk guaranteeing, so multiple steps in vaccine testing and deployment could be done in parellel rather than in series. Normally you wouldn’t be mass producing experimental vaccine doses or medications before you know they work, or else you’ve wasted a ton of money. To speed things up the government basically said they would cover the losses on the vaccines if they ended up being useless. This allowed production of these vaccines to start being distributed as soon as the research was complete. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been churning out millions of doses already with a lot already stockpiled and giving doses of it to icu staff only three days after it got emergency authorization (full formal approval would follow about nine months later).
Honestly people get way more nervous about vaccines than they really need to be. Some of the lowest risk things we use in all of medicine. Though not that they shouldn’t be, since they’re deployed on such a mass scale.
- Comment on The White House is threatening the patents of high-priced drugs developed with taxpayer dollars 11 months ago:
Maybe. Hopefully not. All the more reason to follow every little process for new executive regulations flawlessly when enacting it, like the 6 month comment period. A lot of people are saying just do it immediately. But that’d just be giving the pharma companies and republicans an easy out to strike it down in the courts.
- Comment on The White House is threatening the patents of high-priced drugs developed with taxpayer dollars 11 months ago:
This is specific law Biden is trying to derive the authority from if you’re interested in more:
- Comment on The White House is threatening the patents of high-priced drugs developed with taxpayer dollars 11 months ago:
It’s not toothless. There is an existing law that allows the government to issue their own licenses for drugs still under patent developed using at least some amount of patented money under certain circumstances. It’s pretty broadly worded in the law when this can be done, so previously regulations were made to define the circumstances more precisely. The administration is issuing a new regulation that says one of those circumstances will now include if the drug is high priced limiting its access. Because new regulations issued by the executive branch have a mandatory public comment period after they are proposed its not active quite yet but will be soon (that’s why every headline is using the dumb vague word of threaten). The drug companies are already promising to sue to try and overturn the new regulation. So yeah it’s got teeth.
- Comment on Tesla Whistleblower Says 'Autopilot' System Is Not Safe Enough To Be Used On Public Roads 11 months ago:
I can add more, we don’t only have five senses. Elementary school propoganda that is. Here’s all the ones I can think of while driving.
- Vision
- Hearing
- Tactile feedback from wheel, pedals, you could break this down further into skin tactile pressure receptors, and also receptors of muscle tension, though muscle tension and stretching receptors also involved in number 4
- Proprioception, where your limbs and body are in space
- Rotational acceleration (semi circular canals)
- Linear acceleration (utricle and saccule)
- Smell, okay this might be a stretch but, some engine issues can be smelly
And that doesn’t even consider higher order processing and actual integration of all these things which despite all it’s gains with Ai recently can’t match all the capabilities of the brain to integrate all that information or deal with novel stimuli. Point is Elon, add more sensors to your dang cars so they’re less likely to kill people. And people aren’t even perfect at driving, why would we limit it to only our senses anyways? So dumb
