Very interesting.
I have never watched much television (I've had one in my house only before I was 6 years old and then for an 8 month period once as a university student). I do have a netflix subscription and a laptop; this does not cause me an addiction problem. With very rare exceptions I typically watch about half an hour, once every 2-3 days, as an evening activity with my girlfriend.
I do feel I would be better off spending significantly less time aimlessly browsing the internet, though. Computer games I think are generally less bad than television, and while I certainly have at some times in my life spent a lot of time playing (up to 3-4 hours a day), I don't play as much now (perhaps an hour a day?), and don't feel that this is destructive.
I think I disagree with this comment. StS really does have hidden information and tradeoffs, as you don't know what you will encounter later in the run. Very often the value of a card depends on what cards you are offered later, or even which bosses you face.
Bridge is a slightly odd choice of example in your opening section. A single hand of Bridge has very high randomness; it's quite likely the weaker partnership will "win", assuming they have at least basic competence in the game. The advantage of a stronger pair only really becomes apparent over a large number of hands.
The same is true is Poker, even more so. In fact stronger players may not "win" very many more hands than weaker players at all; it's just that when they win they win more and when they lose they lose less.
This isn't true at all in Chess, of course.
Largely tangential to the main comment, but I'm not sure a "lgbtq" sale is a particularly good example of over-the-top wokeness. The only thing I could reasonably see to object to about it is the name, but I fear we are probably stuck with "lgbt######??", bad as it is. And as examples go, that one is actually quite tame- only 5 letters!
doing the dishes and laundry, but also vigorous exercise, talking to strangers, changing baby diapers, public speaking in front of crowds, having difficult conversations, and tackling unfamiliar subject matters
Mmm. I'm with you on all the social ones (strangers, crowds, conversations etc.). I wasn't remotely stressed the first time I changed a nappy- it wasn't difficult at all. I don't remember the first time I did dishes or laundry, but I imagine I was a small child and rather charmed by it all- certainly not stressed (nor have these things ever bothered me). I don't know that I've ever engaged in vigorous exercise.
Our daughter went through a fairly long period of calling cats "dog", and would aggressively correct us if we tried to correct her. Possibly something of the same thing.
R0 is not remotely immutable. It is a function of people's behaviour and physical infrastructure as well as physical properties of the virus (which are themselves likely changing, especially early in a pandemic, as the virus evolves).
It is not affected by levels of exposure, because R0 is defined as the infection rate in the absence of any exposure.
Nice write-up.
I'd also be interested in discussion of treatments that are only meant to relieve symptoms rather than reduce the risk of infection, for example expectorants (e.g. guaifenesin), antihistamines, and decongestants (e.g. phenylephrine).
"After all: the purpose of copyright law is, to a very large extent, to preserve the livelihood of intellectual property creators, who would otherwise have limited ability to profit from their own works due to the ease of reproducing it once made. Modern AI systems are threatening this, whether or not they technically violate copyright."
Yes, this is 100% backwards. The purpose of copyright law is to incetivise the production of art so that consumers of art can benefit from it. It incidentally protects artists livelihoods, but that is absolutely not it's main purpose.
We only want to protect the livelihood of artists because humans enjoy consuming art- the consumption is the ultimate point. We don't have laws protecting the livelihood of people who throw porridge at brick walls because we don't value that activity. We also don't have laws protecting the livelihood of people who read novels, because while lots of people enjoy doing that, other people don't value the activity.
If we can get art produced without humans invovled, that is 100% a win for society. In the short term it puts a few people out of work, which is unfortunate, but short-lived. The fact that AI art is vastly more efficiently-produced than human art is a good thing, that we should be embracing.
I think it is pretty conclusive that sunscreen wearing will improve your skin complexion and smoothness in the long term (presumably the effect is not worth having if you never go outside in sunshine, obv).
Whether it has enough material effect to do anything to your risk of dying from malignant melonoma (which is pretty rare anyway), is more of an open question. It might not be a worthwhile trade-off for everyone.