meekrohprocess

So does this mean that the mRNA vaccines are probably going to be like flu vaccines, where they have to predict which variant will dominate each season and adjust the doses accordingly?

Can other options like the adenovirus-based or J&J ones be expected to cover a broader spectrum of mutants?

(And why are so many people downvoting these questions? I'm genuinely curious, and I really tried not to offend any sensibilities, but did I say something wrong? Oh god why do people always hate me so much? Is it possible to say or do anything right anymore? Maybe it's time to quit social media...I'm out, y'all are cruel.)

Agencies like ICE and the TSA appear to be jobs programs for people who would otherwise have difficulty finding work.

It's just a shame that the makework mostly involves harassing people. You'd think we could find more productive things for people to do.

I disagree. Regulatory capture is a clear and present danger to the United States, and it is contributing to a breakdown in accountability across all sectors of the nation's economy and society.

So I offered it as an explanation for why the FDA could be well-respected and reasonably functional, while the United States fails to address some acute public health issues.

Things could be much worse; at least they don't turn a blind eye when huge sums of money are not involved. It's still very rare for a drug's approval to be pushed through via fraud, and there are a lot of diseases that need treating. They have a solid track record, even now.

Many American regulatory institutions have crumbled in the past few decades, the FAA being a particularly jarring example.

In some cases it seems like peoples' trust in those regulators may be fueled by nostalgia, but the FDA does seem like one of the few agencies that has retained some measure of independence.

Looking at what has happened in this nation's other industries and institutions, only one crippling decades-long medical crisis doesn't seem all that bad.

We're also very good at not thinking about certain things, though. And I doubt anybody would make a system of immortality that didn't have an escape hatch.

Alpha Centauri is prescient as ever on this subject:

>I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice.

- CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morganlink 3D-Vision Interview

Of course, we would surely need to expand to other planets before we got anywhere near a 500-year lifespan. We can't manage this planet's resources properly even with a 70-year one.

We need a new mark of quality to account for environmental ruggedness.

"Designed in Chennai and Winnipeg."

>Back at the Base I was furious to hear of discussions of the possibility that the atmosphere might be detonated. This possibility had been discussed at Los Alamos and had been quashed by intensive studies of all possibilities by Hans Bethe and others. It was thoughtless bravado to bring up the subject as a table and barracks topic before soldiers unacquainted with nuclear physics and with the results of Bethe's studies.

This part is interesting. I had always heard that there was some concern about the Bomb literally lighting the sky on fire, but it sounds like they did their due diligence.

I agree in principle, and so did I, but there's no denying that it puts a major crimp on your social life. It's wrong that people are forced to decide between accepting predatory terms or losing touch with friendly acquaintances.

Also, if you own a small business, there's a real chance that you'd rely on Facebook for a significant portion of your business, because without a presence on their platforms you had may as well not exist.

People like you and I didn't decide that it was what we wanted. We just have no other options, because the companies which impose the terms aggressively snuff out or buy up their competition.

I would argue that people are accepting these terms under duress; "consent" is the wrong word.

The market believes that Facebook et al will be able to continue enforcing their will unilaterally, and that is good for the companies, so their stocks go up.

Don't leave without a concrete goal and a timeline. What do you want to work on, with who, and why? Don't give up the pay and benefits until you can answer that, and make sure that you budget for N months/years out of work. Idealism doesn't always pay well.

IMHO, don't sweat the IP stuff to much, until you start spending a lot of off-hours time on a serious project (website, incorporation, etc). If you don't have a specific business plan, don't sweat it.

That might be an unpopular opinion, because it probably would leave you vulnerable in most at-will employment contracts, but as long as you don't take anything with you when you leave, big companies are unlikely to aggressively enforce anything.

And this should go without saying, but leave on good terms. Do right by the people who you work with and don't leave them holding any bags. It's the right thing to do, and you might want their recommendations if things go belly-up. Plus, part of the reason why the company is unlikely to go after you on technicalities is that they want to hire creative people like you in the future.

Anecdotally, these findings mesh with my experience in a US city which had a vocational school; I wish these sorts of programs were more popular outside of Europe.

Apparently it's not too common in the States, but our vocational school held tours for local students in the last years of primary school, and they had solid job placement rates for various trade fields. They also did summer programs for local kids.

The article points out that average income/employment outcomes are a bit lower for vocational students, but I like that they try to control for that by looking at things like admissions data.

IME there really is a certain sort of high-scool student who, compared to 4 years of classes, will get a lot more out of guided access to something like a garage, bakery, daycare, machine shop, etc. The vocational school still taught ordinary classes, but on a part-time basis with the student's concentration.

Plus, adventurous locals could sometimes get cheap services. Want to have some fun? Tell your passengers that your car's oil was just changed by a 16-year-old student, while you're on the highway.

Give people more rights, and enforce violations. It won't happen, because the sort of rights that we need would obviate a huge swath of the economy.

But put simply, I think that we need to make it highly illegal to use information asymmetry to take advantage of people at a large scale.

People need legal protection against the natural "just make it work already" instinct that makes us blindly accept TOS terms and follow dark patterns. It would be laughable to argue that a significant portion of users actually understands what they are agreeing to.