“Keith Richards famously joked in 1973 that he’d had his blood changed to get off heroin, although it was later claimed he’d had some kind of blood-filtering treatment“
““The Weather Channel! You get your information from the Weather Channel!” Now Gates was beet red, mocking and gesticulating even more. Heads were turning as people watched this spectacle in the hallway. “You should meet a real climate scientist,” he said while pointing to physicist David Keith, then with the University of Calgary, later with Harvard and the University of Chicago.”
Gates was right.
Anyway, we need to start being more specific about what climate changes are happening and when.
Net Zero was scheduled for 2050. Always seemed unlikely.
Yet the far right screams alarmists every time a wind turbine goes up.
The far left screams we’ll all be dead if we don’t react by 2030.
All the news headlines have politically polarized solving the problem.
But the crazy part is that on a spectrum from far left to far right, the far left was never more correct than on climate change. By which I mean it truly is catastrophic/worldchanging or in a little more words: the worst legacy a generation ever left behind for future generations. And why? Because we are addicted to fossil fuels. Climate change happens more because of wants [of the rich world] than because of needs [of everyone]. We burn our future for our current desires.
I always assume that people who say this either don't own cats, bought one from a breeder and raised it indoors from day one, or live in an apartment building where you need to go through multiple doors to get outside.
Most cats that spent some time outdoors will want to be outdoors. In many settings, it's nearly impossible to keep them in because they will try to sneak out every time they get a chance. Package delivery, you coming back with groceries, etc.
And most of the anti-outdoor-cat stats are more or less bullsh-t. The average lifespan of feral cats might be five years. The average lifespan of a cat that has a home but gets to go out is probably pretty close to an indoor cat. And while outdoor cats can kill birds for sport, they're not causing extinction events in most places. They mostly interact with abundant, trash-feeding urban birds. You might not like the killing, but it's an artificial ecosystem we created and that can handle the predation just fine.
>>> They pose a major threat to birds, killing an estimated 2.4 billion birds each year in the U.S. alone, making cats the top source of direct, human-caused bird mortality in the U.S.
Is this the stat you have issue with? Or is the contention that a pet on a city street at 11:40 PM is not highly at risk of being run over by a human driver?
I just want to point out that you called the outdoor cat stats bullshit, and then proceed to make up "probably true because it feels that way" facts to show that.
Maybe the stats are bullshit and maybe they're not, but I don't care. It's beside the point. Cats want to go outside so you should let them, or don't have them in places where they can't like very dense urban areas. Would you spend your whole life indoors if it gave you another 10 years? I think not. Somehow people who would never accept this for themselves have no problem doing it to their cats.
I'm at high risk for colon cancer & had my first screening last year after putting it off. For those who've not done it yet: it's really no big deal. The most challenging part is drinking the fluids. Please get screened: caught early, it's easily curable, but it definitely kills.
What is the difference in accuracy or other tradeoffs with that compared to a proper colonoscopy? Wasn't clear from the landing page, but I'm guessing there is something, at least not as high accuracy.
Definitely get a colonoscopy. Colon cancer is the one cancer you can detect before it’s a problem. I felt a little dumb once I found out I waited a few years too long then needed surgery and chemo.
That liquid biopsy should be used to detect the numerous other cancers.
Yes, the colonoscopy is a breeze, especially compared to the surgery and chemotherapy. The chemotherapy was definitely harsh. Fortunately, I was a candidate for only 3 months of treatment.
“In conclusion, the statement that cancer screenings do not save lives cannot be properly drawn from the Bretthauer's et al. meta-analysis because lifetime gains are likely underestimated and based on uncertain all-cause mortality estimates.
…
Lifetime gains estimated for the screened group from all-cause mortality reduction is a misleading measure and should be avoided because it implies a benefit for all persons in the screening group, including those not affected by the target cancer.”
“Although gaps persist between the full potential benefit and benefits considering adherence, existing cancer screening technologies have offered significant value to the US population. Technologies and policy interventions that can improve adherence and/or expand the number of cancer types tested will provide significantly more value and save significantly more patient lives.”
Any opinions on the best IOL? My understanding is the trifocal are best if you want to go without glasses but they also have the halos at night because they are diffractive.
There’s a new spiral lens that hasn’t been FDA approved that sounds promising: RayOne Galaxy
Flud vision IOL has been in trials for years and looks very promising. Unless you really need an IOL NOW, I'd wait a few years for accommodating IOLs to hit the market. They make monofocals/trifocals seem like medieval technology as they work at all distances, in the same manner as a natural lens (ie. continuous focus). For someone with myopia/presbyopia, they're an occular enhancement that can give better than 20/20 vision.
Well, try looking at the contents of shopping carts at the checkout lanes of your supermarket. A lot of folks in the bottom half buy a lot of pricey sugary drinks and ultraprocessed microwaveable frozen stuff. So they get hit in their wallets, their waistlines, even their teeth take a hit. Just saying: if they wanted to make better choices, they could. Starting with food choices. Maybe they don't know where to start.
You’re absolutely right. Poor frugality is why we should be ok with “22% of seniors trying to survive on an income of less than $15,000 a year.” They’ve only themselves to blame. It’s their own moral failing, not society’s, really.
All that is is for the best. If there is a volcano at Lisbon it cannot be elsewhere. It is impossible that things should be other than they are; for everything is right.
Make America Healthy Again could be simpler than we think. I would not call it a moral failing though. Just a susceptibilty for flashy packaging, supermarket product placement, even extremely effective prime time and targeted online advertisements. Okay, go ahead, shoot the messenger, downvote me, facebooky zero attention span types.
Sure, private equity in the health (actually disease) care system gets fattened and who pays? Medicaid, medicare... prevention is not profitable to the 1% ? sure
Yes, walking close to the exhaust of a CNG bus is like walking a bit too close to a gas grill/barbecue — hot and a rather chemical, but not noxious and choking like a diesel bus.
Stephen King made the mistake of chiming in on X then having to apologize.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
The things is... The things said do have consequences. Stochastic terrorism is real. Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
The statistics are bloodless, when attempting to dismiss them in the abstract. “Bloodless” modified “statistics”. That the real thing is not bloodless ever was the point, I believe.
Agreed the above are not the same thing. Independent of what Kirk was saying at the time, he has also said "I think it’s worth it. It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That’s a prudent deal." In other words, some people are expendable (for a greater good).
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
I have read one page into your responses in threads on HN and found no clarification as to how my rephrasing misses the point.
I respect your lack of desire to engage on the topic and will not ask it of you, but FWIW: if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)... You are not.
> if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings
He did make that assertion.
> (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)
If the people who will be the "some gun deaths every single year" aren't expendable, what are they? Because it sounds like they're the ones we spend to buy the freedoms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As Kirk said in 2023, "Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty." If you're paying human lives for something, those lives are expendable by definition. Etymology of the word: Latin, expendere, "to pay out, weigh out."
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.
... Yes. That's the "expendable" ones: the people we're willing to sacrifice in exchange for enjoying the benefits of owning cars and household cleaners.
Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
Almost everyone believes that it is just and right that American homeowners can own cars and household cleaners. You would never comment at someone's funeral that the deceased thought that children killed in car accidents or by accidental poisoning were "expendable".
If a city mayor opposed to public transit projects or bike lanes were to get run over by a hitman, I can't fathom that you would be making the same argument.
> Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
No. He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue. This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
For what it's worth, I am actually aware of a funeral where the priest digressed into the idea that the deceased died on a road where people are known to drive recklessly and this is the expected outcome of that behavior, and prayed that the city would take the necessary steps to make that road safer so that we had fewer funerals like this one. It did not go over well with the congregation. ;) Mourners usually want to focus on the individual, not how that individual fits into a larger societal structure.
> He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue.
Right, you get it.
> This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
... You were so close to getting it. Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class. When the whole point of object oriented programming is that we can make sweeping changes to the behavior of instances with relatively small modifications to the class.
The class is policy. The instances are deaths.
Kirk was not only satisfied with but advocated for the current structure of the "GunRights" class. Then someone operating under the rules of an instance of that class killed him.
It's not right that he's dead. It's not right that any of the victims of gun violence at the hands of strangers died. But in Kirk's case, one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused. It's just usually other people paying the price for his philosophy, not him.
(Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
> Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class.
No, it is not.
> one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused.
No, one must not observe that, because his death was neither predictable (unless you think the "hex" Jezebel placed on him was real and effective) nor a consequence. You are looking at a policy enabling an act (one which existed literally for centuries before Kirk's argument), and saying that this is the same as a political philosophy causing that act.
> (Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
If you are not arguing cause, then you should not use the words "predictable consequence" in reference to a specific incident, because that is equivalent to arguing cause.
I am surprised, because I don't understand what you think the words mean.
A man argues that we don't need to salt roads in the winter. Argues it for years. Argues that nature takes care of roads and that actually it's important we leave them in their natural state. When people note that means people will die driving in icy road conditions, he declares that's the price you pay for natural roads and, anyway, it doesn't matter because most road fatalities are bad drivers anyway.
He drives one winter, slides right off the road, his car wraps around a tree, and he dies.
Did he cause his death? No. Conditions did. Conditions and some bad luck.
Is his death a predictable consequence of the conditions, the conditions he argued were necessary to preserve? Yes.
Do I feel sorry for him? It's hard for me, personally, to feel sorry for someone who got to drive on those icy roads he loved for so long before the dice rolled bad for him. But I've known too many, personally, who died on these roads, so my empathy on that specific topic is a bit burned out. It's reserved for those who advocate strongly that we could plow and salt these roads and then die anyway.
"Predictable" requires: "could a reasonable person have held a high prior probability of that man, specifically, dying in this manner?"
No.
The definition of "consequence" is conflated. The motte is "the conditions increased the probability of the event". The bailey is something like "the event follows from the conditions due to moral law". For example, when people speak of "consequences" for a crime, they refer to punishment.
If we reflect the analogy back onto the original case, we're talking about situation in which our anti-road-salt activist lived in a world where the roads were already not salted, and had no direct control over that policy and negligible impact on the minds of those who do. Further, his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road. Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Relatively speaking, he's an American, so yes. His prior is way higher than people in other countries. Moral law doesn't enter into it. That's really all I'm saying.
> Lived in a world where
Well, a country where. But sure; I catch your meaning.
> and negligible impact on the minds of those who do
Agree to disagree. The President of the United States broke the news of his death; he had the ear of politically powerful people in the US.
> his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road
Agreed. No likelier than any other American. But, that's way too damn likely.
> Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Ah. Here's the issue.
While every individual shooter has a motive (or not; my relative was shot by someone suffering a psychotic break), the system makes it more likely Americans will get shot than their neighbors in other countries. America, specifically, has a dangerous mix of too many guns and too much distress. That's not really disputable without just ignoring the statistics.
And Kirk was fine with that. Well, fine enough to think the current balance of gun ownership was correct. Perhaps he advocated for better mental healthv support or more financial equality, to address the distress? I may have missed it. Never heard it if he did.
It's not acceptable he was shot. But Kirk accepted that someone gets shot his whole public life. He argued, vociferously and frequently, that some people were just going to die and that was the price of freedom.
Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
I wouldn't put 'high probability' money on a <2% probability event, but I would not be surprised by it.
> Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
No, no, and no. I already explained this very clearly.
You've watered down the concept of predictable consequences to the point of uselessness. If wearing a seatbelt while driving, not climbing up on the roof during a thunderstorm, not plunging your country into a war, or getting vaccinated to protect yourself from a dangerous disease are not mitigating 'predictable consequences', the term is just empty air.
Why are you choosing this semantic hill to fortify? What value does it bring?
We seem to disagree about what the word means because I agree with your read on Kirk's position, above.
"Kirk's moral calculus involves accepting that possibly some more people will die, beyond what would happen otherwise, in order to guarantee what he considers an essential right to everyone."
This phrasing is simply incoherent to me. Accepting that "possibly some more people" will die, agnostic to anyone's intent, is clearly not the same as accepting a probability of being personally targeted for murder.
The statistics don't really care that he was personally targeted. Are you trying to draw a difference between politically-motivated assassination and random violence?
I'm not. Because the violence is often not "random." Kirk was mid making that point when he was killed; he was about to debate gang-on-gang violence.
Most killings in the US are targeted. Killers (even the psychotic ones) generally have a personal motivation, some self-justification to pull the trigger. The guns make it far easier to succeed than it would be otherwise.
I'm giving Kirk the benefit of the doubt here. Because if what he really meant was "someone's life is the price of our freedom... But not me, I'm special, I'm doing everything right..." He wasn't misguided, he was stupid. And I don't think he was stupid. So I'm left with the wry observation that the manner of his own death was consistent with his philosophy on the necessity of gun ownership to protect essential liberties.
This is an amazing thread and dialog. I commend both of you for keeping it civil and respectful (exactly how Charlie would have wanted). Just two things to add:
1. Driving, cleaning agents and all the other examples are effectively assumed to be rights but they are not guaranteed by the US constitution. The second amendment on the other hand is very explicit. So it only makes the case stronger for the second amendment (~10k non gang violence, non suicide related gun deaths vs ~40k deaths from car accidents per year, although even one death is too many imho)
2. I would recommend listening to the full comment from Charlie about “some gun deaths are inevitable”. He started with the premise that the US already has a lot of guns and in a country with so many guns, you can’t have ZERO gun related deaths. And then went on to say what he said about some gun deaths being rational/prudent etc. So the spirit of what he was saying wasn’t that some people were expendable but more so that from a practicality standpoint you can’t expect to not have any gun related deaths at all.
In another video he talks about gun confiscation/ forcing Americans to give up their guns (at gun point ;) ?) and how that won’t work either but that’s besides the point.
Once again thanks for such a thoughtful dialog. Really appreciate it!
> Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced
This is the key part that people are the MOST upset about. From the right's perspective, they are getting called "nazis", "fascists" for things that are self-evident to them. But to the far-left, those beliefs are equivalent to Nazism. I don't think people on the right fully understand and internalize that their opponents believe that they are literal nazis. They think it's just a rhetorical device. So they think that the left is being grossly negligent by bandying these words around.
I think now, though, the right has finally realized that being called a "nazi" isn't cute or a rhetorical device, and the far-left really intends to kill people. Therefore, a little cancel culture is the very least you should expect from them.
Who is "the media" in this context? MSNBC just let someone go for even suggesting Kirk deserved what happened. If anything, it seems at least mainstream media is very conservative about the labels it assigns to political speakers.
“””
“We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration,” MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd told anchor Katy Tur shortly after Kirk was shot at a Utah university Wednesday
“””
But....mass shootings accounted for under 0.2% of gun deaths in the United States despite the intense media coverage on it over other forms of homicide.
King apologised because he made a claim that was absolutely false and in fact the opposite of Kirk's position on a matter. Not for "chiming in". Not for "disagreeing". For lying.
He was a victim here. Far-left news outlets like Vanity Fair and The Nation twisted the facts and made-up others. I don't really expect a 77-year-old celebrity to have the media literacy to separate fact from fiction, especially when these outlets have tailored their reporting to appeal to exactly his demographic.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
He did. That's why it's important to be able to tell the difference between a situation where the Nazis gas the Jews, and a situation where the Jews gas the Nazis. They are extremely different situations and lessons from one can't be transferred to the other. I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
The lesson you seem to have taken from it is "it's different when I do it". The motto of every blood-soaked despot and every useful idiot who put him in power throughout history.
> I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
I'm sure you thought this was a witty repartee, but it's just dumb.
Hatred, violence and cruelty by an outgroup against your ancestors, or your ingroup, or your ingroup's ancestors, never justifies you own hatred, violence or cruelty towards that outgroup.
The Nazis believed that the Jews had sincerely harmed them. That of course did not justify them. What made them "the Nazis" is not that they adopted that name for themselves. We know that "the Nazis" were the Nazis because they gassed the Jews, and because of everything else in their rhetoric and policies leading up to that point. In "a situation where the Jews gas the Nazis", the Jews would be the ones in the wrong.
> I can see that if your mother tongue doesn't use subject-verb-object word order (e.g. if it's German), it might be confusing.
You have read a history book though right? Like you are familiar with what happened specifically on the metric of needless deaths when nobody killed him earlier?
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