So this is the male version of the trophy spouse stereotype. Focuses on lifting and courting, has an education just to check off a box, writes pseudointellectual drivel to pass the time.
Just as likely to be replaced by a fresher model in a few years.
Serious question: Palladium’s other cofounder is a white nationalist neoreactionary. Is one degree of separation from white nationalism sufficient distance for HN culture?
It is very hard for me to see such dross posted and discussed seriously, earnestly, when everything I’ve been taught about critical thinking as a hacker is to be skeptical, whether of function return codes, technical documentation, or people writing and/or funding obscure online long-form magazines with strong ties to white nationalism/IDW/alt-right/neoreactionarism. As a DC resident, one year after Jan 6, it’s dismaying to see Palladium on the front page, and discussed so credulously here.
I read the first half but then switched to skimming the rest. It’s long-winded and not particularly well-written. I concur with the basic thesis that there are potentially more important things to life than work (or a particular job, at least), and that one should prioritize how to spend one’s time. Also, I agree that the more one pulls on the thread of one’s natural interests, the more likely one is to be rewarded —- Pasteur’s “fortune favors only the prepared mind.” There’s a. undercurrent of sexism, however naive, that made it hard for me to read.
Thank you for holding up a mirror, dang! Being publicly called out came as a bit of shock and really got me thinking.
The comment above really isn't me. Or rather, it is clearly me (since I posted it), but I don't want it to be.
Where I disagree with you is the implication that undesirable people bring bad behavior with them and pollute this site. I think it's the opposite: something about this site brings out the worst in otherwise reasonable people. Or maybe it's all social media.
In any case, the negative effects clearly outweigh the benefits from participation. This will be the last comment from this account; I'll send a request for deletion. Thank you for accidentally curing my HN addiction! I'll be mindful of the door on my way out :)
Not an anti-vaxxer, but comments like this are even better antivaxx fodder :)
I understand where you are coming from, but the ultimate goal is to stop COVID, not get everyone a jab in the arm. If the jabs (legitimately) stop working we should stop the jabs. Compliance with COVID rules isn't a goal unto itself.
Vacccinating mice is a fun idea to think about, but you'd have to develop vaccines for squirrels, raccoons, and pigeons shortly after the mouse one. Also think about all the unintended consequences (your food vaccine getting into waterways, for example). So yeah, this is the kind of idea that makes antivaxxers look sane.
"The evolution of Marek's disease due to vaccination has had a profound effect on the poultry industry. All chickens across the globe are now vaccinated against Marek's disease (birds hatched in private flocks for laying or exhibition are rarely vaccinated). Highly virulent strains have been selected to the point that any chicken that is unvaccinated will die if infected.[14] Other leaky vaccines are commonly used in agriculture. One vaccine in particular is the vaccine for avian influenza. Leaky vaccine use for avian influenza can select for virulent strains.[15]"
I do think that you have a point there. However it's complicated.
Money quote from your cited paper:
"Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts."
However, despite the small odds of a population bottleneck, mutations naturally happen and with "[...] more than a million new infections occurring every day and billions of people still unvaccinated, susceptible hosts are rarely in short supply. So, natural selection will favor mutations that can exploit all these unvaccinated people and make the coronavirus more transmissible." [0].
This [1] nature article from 2020 has a different view on the relation of leaky vaccines, spread control and disease severity; money quote:
"Bailey et al. performed transmission experiments using Marek disease virus in chickens and found that the herpesvirus of turkeys vaccine significantly reduced feather viral load in both vaccinated birds and unvaccinated contact individuals. The authors found that contact birds were less likely to develop disease and die, and that they displayed milder symptoms and shed less virus, when infected by vaccinated birds, potentially because of a lower infectious dose"
The article based on current research [2] _also_ examining Marek disease.
So there you are: one probem, multiple views by experts and a bunch of hackernews readers, unable to evaluate the papers.
> Chickens become infected with MDV by inhalation of dust contaminated with virus shed from the feather follicles of infected birds. In a contaminated poultry house, chicks are infected soon after hatching and remain infectious for life
A "leaky" vaccine isn't a problem in itself if it helps clear the infection faster, because in fact that means there will be fewer chances for mutations. Now in a massified poultry industry, that vaccine only helped chickens not die while remaining infectious, and that's obviously turning farms into mutation making machines.
The Marek disease scenario is more a result of massification of poultry industry and the fact that Marek-infected chickens are infectious for life, rather than the vaccination itself. That's several orders of magnitude higher in terms of mutation lottery tickets.
If you're gonna use the ever-classic Marek scenario to push against vaccination, at least use it against the vaccination of a disease that shares some basic characteristics with MD.
I'm actually not pushing for anything, and since I wasn't following antivaxxers this is all new to me. I guess this was my 10000 moment for the day (https://xkcd.com/1053/)
Sorry if it came off as aggressive, but Marek disease situation is well-loved and ill-interpreted by the antivax crowd, and often brought up even though the similarities between the diseases and their clinical courses alone make them completely incomparable from an epidemiological perspective.
Some quite credible NIH immunologist I know has openly stated that Marek's scenario is very much a valid risk to consider since the very beginning of the pandemic, among many others ofc, including ADE, etc.
Amusingly enough, he also worked on actual mRNA therapeutics for quite some time, in addition to viral delivery vectors in cancer therapeutics. Has a PhD, his h-index is ~15, I think. Triple vaxxed, if you must know his medical status. You should be able to google him rather easily, only 20-40 people in the country that do this.
Looking forward to hear about your credentials.
Remember: science has always been about questioning the dogma. Not the other way around. Criticism and open dissent must be the norm, not something to be scorned and ostracized.
can't believe I'm actually writing this on a technology forum.
One of the authors of the 2015 paper[0] on Marek's disease that gave way to the "questioning the dogma" crowd to refuse to vaccinate had to write an article[1] to explain some of what I just said and more.
Since you popped an argumentum ab auctoritate (without even giving a name?), I'd drop that he obviously also has a PhD, and an h-index of 88 which is actually remarkable.
And it sounds like he was perfectly aware of this. This feeling of being "not really a man" can be overwhelming, and I feel like this is an incredibly toxic thing perpetuated by our culture.
It's possible to spend an entire lifetime trying to prove the opposite of this statement to the world, and most importantly oneself, and fail at this impossible task. But the saddest part is that because the majority of people think in these "man/boy" terms it's easy to start thinking that all people do.
The next step is to consider oneself hopelessly broken and unworthy of affection, and dismiss any real friendship as a pity party. And yet: there was an outpouring of love and sadness following aaronsw's suicide. So perhaps living up to the stereotype of manliness is not the most important thing in the world.
> So perhaps living up to the stereotype of manliness is not the most important thing in the world.
I think some things are being conflated here. There is the stereotype of manliness, conforming to which requires you to do or have interest in stereotypically manly things (sports, cars, home improvement, working outside, being tough, being reticent to show emotion). But there's also failure to conform to adultness -- being able to call a cab, order food, pay bills, manage finances, maintain steady employment.
It sounds that Swartz, though not stereotypically manly, was also not stereotypically adult. The former's not a problem -- I'm not manly either, I say as I cuddle my pet rabbit -- but failure to be an adult can cause issues (at least for those without such indulgent friends and family as Swartz had).
True. This one hit close to home for me personally, but I can say with confidence that therapy can make things a lot better.
There's a tendency to either coddle a person with these issues, or try to get them to change through tough love. The reality is that neither of these things is helpful - what is really needed is a good therapist.
P.S.: In case someone is reading this and nodding along: you have likely spent years on the roller coaster of trying to prove yourself through pathological self-sufficiency interleaved with breakdowns and "failure to adult". It's OK to seek help. Even pro athletes use coaches and personal trainers if they are stuck in a rut. This is no different. Oh, and you are far from alone in this.
If your birth country isn't India or China, a masters could significantly speed up the process of getting a US green card. For India or China you'd wait a decade anyway.
There are even to this day quite a lot of houses in Russia with this exact setup. My grandparents old house had an oven stove and radiators. They replaced the oven stove with an electric boiler sometime in 2000s but kept the radiators.
Americans lost two skyscrapers and still talk every year about how the country was scarred. Yes, it was terrible, but imagine a country literally burned by fire from the sky, and future generations continuing to suffer through birth defects. The sheer magnitude of the suffering perpetuated in the name of "freedom" and proper values is staggering.
But, to play devil's advocate, isn't this exactly what we should want, long term?
I think the end goal is for Black and autistic people to be thought of as people first and foremost, and their differences would take a back seat. This is the only way we can be one big happy family. Wouldn't the best way to accomplish this be for the rest to realize that they actually have something in common with the marginalized groups?
Imagine a white supremacist who learns they had a Black ancestor. That would transform their whole world view.
Same with autism: neurotypical people being able to relate to quirks that cause social exclusion isn't something to shut down. We should be celebrating the normalization of these things because that is how they stop being markers of the "other".
Sometimes I wonder what the people who are up in arms about being "not properly" Black, autistic, etc. have as their end game. Perpetual exclusion of the marginalized groups for sympathy points? I think many would gladly trade those points for greater inclusion.
Being able to better communicate with one another is obviously a good thing. The point is that the language being used isn't facilitating that and that is why the autistic community has pushed back on it. So it seems to me, that it is now on the neurotypical community to listen to that feedback.
Also, autism isn't just about social quirks. These are people with different neurophysiology who experience the world in a different way. It is not simply a matter of holding a different opinion or learning a particular behavior. This is not something that can be 'normalized' by talking through it.
The autistic community is largely against gate keeping, and are quite accepting of people who are self-diagnosed. This is not about not being 'properly' autistic, but about having a voice. Being a part of society for the person you are. To not having the challenges you face in a world defined by and for neurotypical people being trivialized.
My understanding is that the normalization doesn’t mean subsumption but that the differences are normal and accounted for by default. For example, m/f bathrooms are largely considered normal to account for two different gender identities (this is extremely simplified; I’m aware that non-binary people exist but they are still not considered “normal” largely and are not accounted for by default). Very few people are running around saying all men are a little bit women so why do we have separate bathrooms, clearly this is perpetual exclusion.
> magine a white supremacist who learns they had a Black ancestor. That would transform their whole world view.
Afaik, it does not. Nazi who found out they have Jewish ancestors did not concluded being Jew is fine. They continied to hate Jews and found whole thing unfair.
Self Hate is a thing, ignoring evidence is a thing and both can make you even more dangerous.
Just as likely to be replaced by a fresher model in a few years.