Sandbox (4)

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Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.

5,998 thoughts on “Sandbox (4)”

  2. Tom English: Nowadays, how do you specify where the fold goes?

    If you are using the “Block” editor, there should be a “more” block that you can add. I think you have to search the blocktypes available.

  4. Tom English:
    Heartfelt thanks to whomever it was that got the site to render embedded LaTeX again. I put a ridiculous amount of work into some of the posts containing that stuff.

    I think Pavel Holoborodko deserves the thanks. 🙂

    It seems only fair to contribute a brief post in return.

    Great news. I’m looking forward to it.

  5. J-Mac: So, does it mean I can post a post without censorship if the evidence comes form Pfizer, CDC, FDA etc?

    I suggest you offer a post for publication, including the evidence for any claim.

  6. Alan Fox: I suggest you offer a post for publication, including the evidence for any claim.

    What kind of evidence are you willing to accept?
    Are you, or DNA_jock, willing to accept the evidence from WHO from 2020 that clearly indicates covid-19 had the same morality rate as influenzas?

  7. J-Mac: Are you, or DNA_jock, willing to accept the evidence from WHO from 2020 that clearly indicates covid-19 had the same morality rate as influenzas?

    Well, let’s see the evidence! Although I am curious as to the metric they used to measure the morality rate — was it the CFR (case fornication rate)?
    ROFLMAO.

  8. DNA_Jock,

    I expect my morality rating will be weighed in the balance but hope my eventual death will not be too excessive.

  9. DNA_Jock: Well, let’s see the evidence! Although I am curious as to the metric they used to measure the morality rate —was it the CFR (case fornication rate)?
    ROFLMAO.

    We included 77 estimates of the case fatality risk from 50 published studies, about one-third of which were published within the first 9 months of the [2009, flu] pandemic. We identified very substantial heterogeneity in published estimates, ranging from less than 1 to more than 10,000 deaths per 100,000 cases or infections.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/
    The cherries are ripe for picking.

  10. DNA_Jock: Well, let’s see the evidence! Although I am curious as to the metric they used to measure the morality rate —was it the CFR (case fornication rate)?
    ROFLMAO.

    We included 77 estimates of the case fatality risk from 50 published studies, about one-third of which were published within the first 9 months of the [2009, flu] pandemic. We identified very substantial heterogeneity in published estimates, ranging from less than 1 to more than 10,000 deaths per 100,000 cases or infections.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809029/
    The cherries are ripe for picking.

  11. Oops. The old plug-ins blocked double posting.

    I don’t know anyone who’s been tested for flu, so I’m suspicious about case fatality rates. Also, fatality rates vary by age. I think the 1918 flu was an exception.

    When covid started up, it seemed obvious to me that the extreme symptoms were a result of novelty. Naive immune systems overreacting. This was an informed guess, but it seems to have been about right. After recovery, or after vaccination, people still get infected, but don’t get as sick.

    I think this is true of flu, also. I’ve read that there is some cross immunity to flu variants.

  13. Alan Fox:
    DNA_Jock,

    I expect my morality rating will be weighed in the balance but hope my eventual death will not be too excessive.

    Have you made up your mind to go down with the ship, Alan???
    Please tell me it ain’t so? Are you siding with dna_jock_corrption because of what?

  14. DNA_Jock: Well, let’s see the evidence! Although I am curious as to the metric they used to measure the morality rate —was it the CFR (case fornication rate)?
    ROFLMAO.

    Mortality rate? Are you on drugs? We are talking about human lives and not chickens… Do you get it? Why would you laugh about such an important issue as human lives? What is so funny about people dying unnecessarily?

  15. J-Mac: Have you made up your mind to go down with the ship, Alan??? Please tell me it ain’t so?

    With climate change predictions of an inevitable 3°C, there’s no escape. We’re all in the same boat, though rowing in different directions.

    Are you siding with dna_jock_corrption because of what?

    Did you not get the joke? Your typo “mortality=>morality” is pretty funny.

  16. Alan Fox: With climate change predictions of an inevitable 3°C, there’s no escape. We’re all in the same boat, though rowing in different directions.

    Did you not get the joke? Your typo “mortality=>morality” is pretty funny.

    Alan,
    Are you aware of NASA finding that the planet you live on and possibly me, got 15% greener since you got your last flu vaccine?
    I love Jimmy D so that’s why the link

  17. Alan Fox: Did you not get the joke? Your typo “mortality=>morality” is pretty funny.

    Do you really think this is funny Alan? You are jobbed and so is you family, right?

  19. Alan Fox: With climate change predictions of an inevitable 3°C, there’s no escape. We’re all in the same boat, though rowing in different directions

    Compared to the recent past (1995–2014), GSAT averaged over the period 2081–2100 is very likely to be higher by 0.2°C–1.0°C in the low-emissions scenario SSP1-1.9 and by 2.4°C–4.8°C in the high-emissions

    https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-4/

    Inevitable?

  22. J-Mac: Are you aware of NASA finding that the planet you live on and possibly me, got 15% greener since you got your last flu vaccine?

    Climate change results in extremes. Humans live in a sweet spot of temperature, precipitation, wind etc. It’s not whether plants will benefit* in areas where precipitation increases (in our garden, irises outcompete grass now); it’s whether humans will be able to adapt.

    * For instance

  24. Alan Fox:
    Why are there so many fewer inspects splattered on my windscreen?

    ETA Inspects? Insects!

    It’s a mystery.

    “ In light of previously suggested driving mechanisms, our analysis renders two of the prime suspects, i.e. landscape [9, 18, 20] and climate change [15, 18, 21, 37], as unlikely explanatory factors for this major decline in aerial insect biomass in the investigated protected areas. ”

  25. Alan Fox: It’s happening wherever I look.

    That’s not responsive to my question about inevitably. I gave a link to the most authoritative projections, and they do not suggest inevitability.

  26. petrushka: I gave a link to the most authoritative projections, and they do not suggest inevitability.

    Really? I confess I only scanned the article you linked to. If there is ‘good’ news in the article, I’d be interested in a pointer.

  27. petrushka: I gave a link to the most authoritative projections, and they do not suggest inevitability.

    From the article:

    The upper and lower bounds of model projections may further be sensitive to the missing representation of processes and to deep uncertainties about aspects of the climate system.

    How authoritative projections are is one thing. How accurate they are, how well the maps match the territory, is another. Other than “wait and see”, how to we judge?

  28. Remember when Arctic sea ice extent was reassuring data. Then it became practical to assess sea ice volume.

  29. I’m not going to make predictions, but I will list some reasons to be optimistic or pessimistic.

    Pessimistic:

    Population is not going to start going down in the next thirty years. Even if the world fertility rate goes to 1.7, it will take a century or more to decline significantly.

    Energy usage is not likely to diminish much.

    Solar and wind will not contribute much unless we invent better batteries.

    Optimistic:

    Population in the developed world is declining. That is where per capita energy usage is highest.

    Modular nuclear power could go online within ten years. Among the possibilities, it could enable less developed regions to achieve a decent standard of living without burning fossil fuels.

    Demand has a way of accelerating technology. My pessimistic assessment of wind and solar might look stupid in ten years.

    Projections are always wrong. Optimistic and pessimistic alike. Something different will happen.

  30. It has come to my attention that the Department of Defence was really in charge of the so-called pandemic of a novel virus SARS-CoV-2 and more importantly of the production and distribution process of now known as “counter measures” often referred to as “vaccines”…
    One question remains: Was DNA_jock, who bragged about getting hired to do whatever about the greatest panicdemic in mankind history actually working for DoD?
    It seems reasonable that if he was either directly or indirectly working for DoD, shall we call him henceforth DoD_jock?
    You tell me..
    BTW: I gotta tell you almost everyday I find out that this panicdemic scam goes just beyond rebranding the flu into covid-19… This is way beyond that..
    If DoD_jock fell for it, well that is good for him… I mean for his bank account which he is going to need when the time comes…

  33. I just lurk a bit here, but it seems to me that J-Mac’s off-the-wall obsessively delusional fixation on covid conspiracy theories is certainly a reason to not even bother to look, except fro the train wreck experience. It’s hard for me to believe that beliefs such as his exist, and yet they do. It’s scary.

  34. aleta:
    I just lurk a bit here, but it seems to me that J-Mac’s off-the-wall obsessively delusional fixation on covid conspiracy theories is certainly a reason to not even bother to look, except fro the train wreck experience. It’s hard for me to believe that beliefs such as his exist, and yet they do. It’s scary.

    He does a good job of illustrating Poe’s Law – making claims so idiotic that they can’t even be parodied. So we can’t tell if he believes that crap, or whether he is just purposely making idiotic claims just to see what happens.

  36. aleta:
    I just lurk a bit here, but it seems to me that J-Mac’s off-the-wall obsessively delusional fixation on covid conspiracy theories is certainly a reason to not even bother to look, except fro the train wreck experience. It’s hard for me to believe that beliefs such as his exist, and yet they do. It’s scary.

    Far worse beliefs exist. What is more concerning (to me) is that people associate a wacky-loony belief with a person and then fail to notice the same belief in a different person. For example, on this website, the principal actors think petrushka is somehow moderate or sane compared to J-Mac. No, on covid J-Mac and petrushka push the exact same beliefs.

    It may have to do with where this website (and its main participants) is coming from. “The Skeptical Zone” was originally skeptical specifically about ID theory. ID theory is a pseudoscientific ploy to smuggle evangelical Christianity into school curriculum in USA. This website provides a platform to the opponents of ID theory. ID theory is wacky-loony, but when people congregate to debate the wacky-loony with a mainly destructive purpose, i.e. attack and ridicule (which is what ID theory fully deserves, mind you), the result is the debris of wacky-loony. In the process, people take sides, either the wacky-loony side or the anti-wacky-loony side, where the one side gets demolished and the other side are the demolishers with nothing positive to provide of their own.

    Let’s have a recent example that in my view does not deserve a response, but fully illustrates the nature of the kind of people we are dealing with,

    petrushka:
    Biological evolution is not a theory that everything evolves or that things evolve by themselves.

    This is one complete post. First, to contribute something to a discussion one should be able to say what the thing under discussion *is* instead of (only) what it is not (and nothing else). So, the first and, in my view, the main problem here is that people think they are making a point when they are actually making no point. In the quoted post, there is no constructive content at all.

    But it is worse than this. The plain content of the post is straightforwardly false. In reality, biological evolution is exactly the theory that everything (everything biological, that is) evolves and that it evolves by itself. Let’s look it up on Wikipedia: “Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.” In this statement, change is equated with evolution, so everything that changes can be said to evolve. And the theory includes that everything biological definitely changes in their heritable characteristics over generations. Check on the first part: Evolution is the theory that everything (biological) evolves.

    Next statement on Wikipedia, “[Evolution] occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation…” What is natural selection? “[Natural selection] is … the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations.” So, natural selection is the change and evolution is also the change. In summary, the theory of evolution is that everything changes and that what changes them is the change. Rather than dismissing this as circular nonsense (which it is), let’s interpret this charitably: According to the theory of evolution, things evolve by themselves. This is what the theory of evolution says and is, and the quoted post gets this flatly wrong.

    It is this tolerance (presumably a positive concept, even though it is not) of nonsense and straightforward falsehoods in the anti-wacky-loony camp that demonstrate that they have descended to the level of wacky-loony camp. The two camps are the same in their methods. People in one camp debunk people in the other camp, but when people in one’s own camp display the exact same level of bunkum as people in the other camp, their is no debunking. Anyway, ultimately, debunking is just the destructive part of the discussion. The constructive part is missing entirely.

  37. I will only note, in passing, that the definitions of evolution quoted by Eric do not contain the text that I posted.

    But at least he included a link to the post in question, for context.

    Populations evolve. Saying “things evolve by themselves” implies that individuals evolve. I may have misread that, but no one saw fit to discuss it. Anyway, populations change in the context of ecosystems. Even if the change is neutral, it is constrained.

  38. petrushka: Populations evolve.

    Indeed. I vaguely recall a post by a former contributor, Gregory, discussing the error that individuals don’t evolve, populations do.

  41. There are a lot of humorless people on the internet.

    I find it impossible to discuss differences of opinion without a bit of humor.

    No one wins arguments on the internet, but you can win or lose respect.

  44. It seems pretty obvious that nobody here, including DoD_joke, realizes that the so-called pandemic response was fully orchestrated and handled by DoD.
    If DoD_joke had known about it, he wouldn’t have been able to reveal it anyways…
    So, who would like to see the evidence?
    DoD-jock? Did you or didn’t you know who you were working for???

  45. BTW: Let’s not forget the disease X is fast approaching…Few know what it is going to be, but the severity rate of still an unknown disease is already well established – 20 times higher than convict-19 . Who can deny this???This is the miracle!!!
    Who can make these kinds of predictions other than real good scientists working for none other than the people of the world and not the big pharma … 😉

  46. The so called convict-19 panicdemic is getting more interesting than I would ever imagine. Recently there was a court case, weird one, where a whistleblower sues Pfizer for fraud, surprisingly, the US DOJ showed up and said Pfizer didn’t commit a crime the US government told them to commit the fraud…
    I know that some of us would have to take a deep breath after reading it, but this is the reality whatever that I means…. I know now DoD_joke had no clue what was going on … but he get no pass…

  47. I don’t mean to point out some stupid morons who fell for the… I actually no longer know how to call it.. the pandemic? How could intelligent people fall for this get the mRNA or DNA vaxxed? I’m speechless.. I don’t know what to say anymore..
    DoD running it… if you don’t know why, follow the $

  48. petrushka:
    No one wins arguments on the internet, but you can win or lose respect.

    An excellent observation I note is being illustrated again and again. I think there’s a point beyond which there’s nothing more to lose.

  49. J-Mac writes, “I don’t know what to say anymore.”

    That is a good thing, I think! 🙂

  50. aleta:
    J-Mac writes, “I don’t know what to say anymore.”

    That is a good thing, I think! 🙂

    People who injected themselves and their children and loved ones who should have known better will pay in the end a big price working for DoD or not…
    You? What are you going to do if it gets through your thick scull you have been lied to?

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