samsa

Bleeding edge tech is often used to satisfy our prurient desires. I am quite certain this is one of the directions AI is headed.

What makes you so confident that is the case? I listen to lots of classical music and certainly hear musicians breathing, even on older recordings. I would imagine fingernails on a keyboard are of a similar decibel level.

Michigan is an exception. No AFCI required.

I saw a Dr the other week (to rule out Covid and strep) and despite testing negative for both and telling me I just had a cold she offered me antibiotics. I declined, not wanting to be part of this problem, but was taken aback that she would basically try to push them on me.

I used to work as a librarian and ran into the issues the author writes about. Less than she did - but it being a community that skewed older I have plenty of experience shepparding older and/or low income individuals through basic online tasks such as applying for unemployment etc. If you have never done this kind of work then it is very easy to take for granted how low the baseline technology competency of certain folks is. Telling someone they will need a working phone number, a password, and recovery codes to access their email when "it used to just work" will simply not fly for them.

This side steps the issue that often these are scenarios where the patron is already locked out of their account and coming into a library as a last resort - so lecturing them on backup codes will be of no avail.

"So pretty much, my entire career is built on one amazing stroke of luck."

This, to me, is the buried lede. Much of success is due to luck. Not all; some people on balance are more talented and persistent and hard working than lucky. Others have more luck (a referral, inside info for helping them prep, etc.). I just landed a new job that I am quite confident I would not have been considered for without a referral from someone close to me working for the company already.

After multiple rounds of interviews and assessments I am confident they feel I am a good match, but without the luck of that referral I very well may not have gotten past the call with the recruiter.

I suppose "scare" was perhaps too strong a word. "Steer" would have been more appropriate. Search Apple's website for "repair" to get a sense of how important they think letting consumers know about this program is.

You'll find 404 responses when you click on repair manual links; the link to the self service repair is at the bottom of the support page; the self service storefront is very deliberately non-descript and as others have mentioned immediately raises red flags for people trained to look for basic clues about a site's legitimacy. Etc.

Apple would like you to have them / their contractors repair your device, or better yet buy a new one.

Everything about this program signals that Apple is grudgingly doing this. It's designed to scare people away from doing the repairs themselves.

So are vegan diets. (By which I mean: whole food, plant based.)

But you don't need to pick a team with all the tribalism that's involved. It really is as simple as eating less, like the article lays out.

And eating less is much easier if the foods you are eating are fiber rich (more filling).

Have you experimented with blades? This was my takeaway after using Merkur blades and I abandoned safety razors for a while. I tried again using Feather blades and the experience was much better: far superior to cartridge shaving. With more practice I also improved my technique which undoubtedly helps.

According to the CDC the majority of sexually active adults in the US will get HPV at some point in their lives.

Why do people care what anyone thinks about politics? Being a famous rock and roller does not exempt one from having a political opinion worthy of consideration or debate. It shouldn't give more credence to one's opinion, but it shouldn't take away from it either.

There is a push to get rid of new natural gas hookups and force new construction to use all electric appliances. Some localities have legislated this.

This particular CDC page reports it was last updated in August.

The NY Post article you link to is about getting both Covid and influenza at the same time. That may be rare.

Getting covid a second time after having previously had it (which is what McCullough erroneously claimed was near impossible) is in fact increasingly common.

This is incorrect, or at least very misleading. Excess carbohydrate consumption exacerbates insulin resistance but the cause is an excess of intramyocellular lipids.

Cloud providers are not required to scan for this content.

They are, however, required to disclose it if they find it.

That said, many cloud providers do in fact scan for this content. Apple was the odd one out.

MacOS does this with “enable Siri” after every update and annoys me to no end.

Marriage is one of a very few things in life humans undertake where they are asked to commit to do something “for life” that they have never done before. And their closest vantage point is likely their parents’ marriage.

I think it’s not so much people take it lightly, as that they have no idea of what they are getting into and what kind of work a modern marriage involves.

I don’t like paywalls but I have learned to live with simply not reading certain articles.

I have a subscription to the Washington Post, and can access content from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, the New Yorker, etc. through the public library I work at.

If you’re in the U.S. you should consider checking out your local library. There’s a good change you have access to some of the above already and don’t know it.

I have found zero medical societies/health institutes that recommend someone begin drinking alcohol who currently abstains for any reason. If you already drink alcohol, consuming a single serving of red wine per day is probably not detrimental.

The pop science articles (think NYT, etc.) love to lead with clickbait like "Wine could extend your life by X years" but from what I can tell alcohol in the west, to the extent that it extends lifespans, does so by thinning blood, which is needed because of our poor (high fat) diet.

I for one will continue my post-737 Max strategy of only flying Delta (Airbus). Not that I fly often.

I'm in the US, and have had one colonoscopy at age 33 (to rule out cancer, I had rectal bleeding). It was hemorrhoids, but will have another any month now because of family history of polyps and colon cancer. And I'll have one every 5 years even if I have zero symptoms.

Reading this story, my fear is that, if successful, Trump would not have been able to help himself from making statements that would embolden other such groups in other states.

For a public library that traffics almost exclusively in popular materials (genre fiction and non-fiction written for a general audience) print books are bought with the understanding that they will be “weeded” after a couple of years anyway.

Many countries have Vitamin D deficient populations, including Italy: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5986426/

In Italy, it gets worse the older the population gets.

It is also an issue in Germany: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4499202/

I make no claims other than: 1) there is a very strong correlation between vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency and poor outcomes for COVID-19, and 2) many populations, including those in sunny countries, suffer from widespread vitamin D insufficiency.

I for one have been taking 1,000 IUs of vitamin D every day since March, and trying to get sun exposure mid-day whenever I can.

For reference, see this article in the Lancet:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8...

It is worth noting that living in a sunny country does not guarantee the larger population receiving adequate Vitamin D through sun exposure, as many such populations somewhat paradoxically avoid sun exposure, as there are legitimate health reasons for doing so (extreme heat, concerns about skin cancer, etc.).

My COVID coffee experience was the opposite- I have been drinking half a pot every morning since mid-March. Last night I had the thought that I should go cold turkey, and this blog post might be the last little push I needed to do it.

One year for Lent I gave up listening to music/radio in the car during my commute to classes (at least half an hour each way) and one of the things I did after an uncomfortable week of silence was to memorize and recite poems to myself. I still do this, adding a new poem every year or so. Now my favorite poems are always with me.

One of the last ones I memorized was Frederick Seidel's "Ode to Spring":

https://poets.org/poem/ode-spring