@Klaus said in The "Replication Crisis":

So I think the implicit message of your statement - today's FACTS are just as unreliable - is not appropriate.

Well, facts are facts.

There's certainly progress in many things, like oncology as you point out.

But, my point is that many of the things that have caused the progress were, in fact, just guesses. We'll never know how many of the guesses fell by the wayside because they were not reproducible, or just plain wrong.

An example is the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter - gonna get nerdy here, so bear with me. The SG catheter is a device inserted into a patient's heart via a peripheral or central vein. The catheter measures pressures in various chambers of the right heart, and is supposed to tell you how the heart is functioning. It can determine blood flow (cardiac output), oxygen levels as well as just pressure. In the early 1980s it became standard practice to insert this in critically ill patients. I have inserted, literally, hundreds of these. Yes, hundreds.

Then...things started to change. Looking at mortality and morbidity in ICU patients, turns out that patients who had these things put in did worse than those without, probably because of poor decision making when looking at the data they provide. Toward the end of my career, it had become a rare thing.

Look at the use of beta-blockers during surgery. Same thing.

So, my point is that, basically, I agree. Medicine is not "hard science" as you put it. It's trial and error. Sometimes the trial works, but it takes a long time to reproduce and become standard.

Thanks for sharing, @George-K. It’s an important reminder for why we need good government regulations with strong enforcement. Sound enforcement of good construction code could likely have prevented the collapse shown in the video.

@jon-nyc said in Hunter Remorse:

He’s running against Donald Trump, father of the Trump kids.

Are you implying the Trump kids are crooks like Hunter Biden? Prove it.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Trump losing seniors by 20+ points?:

I also don't trust the polls. There was a pro-Trump bunch of people here waving their flags and what-have you in the middle of the town, and the number of cars beeping their support was surprisingly large, particularly here in MA.

It seems to me that the pro-Trumpers are very enthusiastic, whereas the pro-Bidens are mostly pretty meh about him.

That being said, I'm generally completely wrong with election predictions.

This is why getting Democrats to vote early is so important. Make sure they cast their votes before they get too demoralized or something happens and they wish they could change it.

@89th said in Tone it down:

@LuFins-Dad said in Tone it down:

HOLY SHIT! Right now, there is a legitimate shot that @Aqua-Letifer pulls the lever for Trump, and @89th pulls the lever for Biden! This is like Bizarro World!

Ha!! Well I already voted, and it was for a chick.

If you’re going to vote for a Libertarian, make it a Libertarian Space Cowboy, not just some chick!

#1) @George-K By “come as you are” I don’t mean we encouraged to come in sleeping shorts and bed hair. Most guys are in suits or slacks and collared shirts, but there are a few in jeans and a t-shirt and it’s not a thing. Nobody cares or looks down their nose. It’s the platform that matters. I bought a couple of shirts and ties and a Sport Coat for a kid that is a really good guitarist and I wanted in the Praise Band. Heh, now I’m being asked to wear jeans so I don’t stand out.

@Aqua-Letifer 1) The jackass that wrote the note would have been a jackass whether they were in a halter top and daisy dukes or in a designer dress. There are assholes in all sides as well.

you need to rethink your analogy. Pineapples and pegging Jon’s sister actually have a lot to do with each other.

@Jolly I enjoy some of the praise music, but you have to have hymns. This guy hasn’t had a hymn in the service for 4 weeks...

@Doctor-Phibes said in "Operating Expenditures" at the Lincoln Project:

Actually, 100K a month isn't that much. It's pretty easy to get through $2K in a week on expenses, so if there's 10 of them, that would do it - 5 of them if they're staying in swanky city hotels and living large.

Yep, I agree. I one time had to fly Thailand - US - Thailand and then about 5 days later, Thailand - US - Vietnam. Plane tickets alone for just those flights were about USD$12K or more. Plus other expenses and that was only in a two week period.

'Excessively villifying' Hillary. As though that was possible.

Ohr’s wife was a contractor at Fusion GPS with the thumb drive.

But nobody gives a shit about this stuff. Schiff acts like he would be so appalled by this kind of stuff. Hahaha

Hey Schiff care to rebutt the Nunez report again. Nah I didn’t think so.

@bachophile said in Chicago on Zoom:

What it’s called when the cover band is better than the original?

I dunno.

I saw the recent incarnation of the original in Fall 2019. They were pretty darn good...

It's going to be covered.

With a pillow, until it quits moving...

@Klaus said in Apple announces new iPhones and stuff.:

@xenon said in Apple announces new iPhones and stuff.:

@George-K yeah, I don't even see a single use case.

No one downloads gargantuan files on cellular. LTE is almost good enough for full 4K - which would be ridiculous on a 6 inch screen.

Maybe there's some use-case for super low latency... haven't really seen it for a smartphone.

I think the main reason for 5G isn't its maximum speed, but the speed it can deliver when many users use the same tower concurrently. If you sit in an airport and 300 people use the same mobile access point, then you need to divide the max speed by 300.

That said, I agree that 5G isn't very useful at the moment.

Right - but even that is an argument for lowering wireless carrier capex rather than a novel new end-user experience. With enough LTE access points, even dense gathers can have good coverage - it's a matter of infrastructure outlay.

Gotta be careful about those parallel universes.

alt text

"They don't deserve to know."

"You have to pass it to see what's in it."

Nice.

ETA: "Dancing with the Tsars." LOL.