CharonY

Same thing there. You wouldn't want a random person to poke you. There, you would still want to have trusted folks in the community trained to administer injections even if access to fully trained health personnel is lacking. The alternative would be to simplify systems to that would allow safe self-administration, which still requires some training. That is basically what I was alluding to.

Mrs Tilly likes Apollo, but doesn't like God. Tilly likes essays and speeches, but neither prose nor poetry.

From your first premise, your second one (that human exist) would already be very unlikely. If we assume that we have 1000 worlds starting with the exact state as Earth 100,000 years ago the likelihood increases as by then there was substantial human population. But there are so many random trajectories that it is incredibly unlikely to get the same multiple times. It is more likely to throw a billion cards in the air a thousand times and they landing down exactly the same way every time. Edit: I don't think that this is a question related to evolution.

They are not going around shopping for the nicest locations. They (or their eggs) hitch a ride on their hosts and their belongings. They are also nocturnal. Hotels are where people sleep. But so is your bedroom. The main difference being that you probably don't have a lot of travelers in your bedroom. Breath initiatives host seeking behavior. I am not sure whether blood type affects the chemical composition but essentially they are attracted by body heat and breathing, AFAIK.

It is fairly simple, really. They are not only present in hotels but they are human parasites and live where humans are. Humans are vectors in their spread, because they don't travel much themselves (most likely because they never get approved for credit cards). Hotels are frequented by man different humans, so they are hotspots for their spread. I also think that they are distributed around the world. So in short, whenever there is a human with human skin, there is at least a non-zero risk of presence of bed bugs.

Even good hotels can have occasional infestations as you cannot test everyone coming in. But they generally spend more money on remedies if they get affected.

So what then do you think infectious diseases are associated with? Do you think that anyone is safe from them or that it only occurs in certain folks?

You are overthinking it. They are a sign that at some point bed bug got into this area. It could be from folks accidentally carrying in, contaminated fabrics or furniture, etc. There is not that one weird rule that makes them appear form nothing.

I hope you are not implying that cockroaches magically appear when leftovers are present. Rather, they are present in a given habitat and while in urban settings much of it could be human leftovers, they are as happy to munch on all types of organic matter think feces, dead skin and so on. Waste control can limit cockroach presence, but depending on how many are around and how sealed your home is, they might keep coming back. Bed bugs are adept in hiding all kind of areas (beyond sleeping areas think anything porous, like wooden joints, carpets) etc. The lesson here is that that they are resilient bastards and it can take a lot of effort to find and get rid of them.

Your claim was a different one: I.e. the claim was that the pain is the reaction, not an effect of the reaction. In some cases defense reactions can cause pain, as well as damages from the reaction as well as damages from pathogens or other external factors. That is strange as pain is that it is a fairly common symptom https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/neurological/depts/multiple-sclerosis/ms-approaches/pain-in-ms It is not credible. Here is a news article on the paper I had in mind https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/multiple-sclerosis-linked-to-shingles-idUSTRE75F6R9/ Again, as the likelihood increases after infection, the recovery hypothesis does not make a lot of sense. But more importantly, MS is not associated with an pathogen per se (with one possible exception*). Rather, a hallmark of the disease is that our own immune system decided to attack myelin, a structure that surrounds parts of our neurons. IOW it is an autoimmune disease. The challenge is that for autoimmune diseases in general we really do not know how these exactly work. Generally speaking things like chronic inflammation but also acute infection increase the likelihood that our immune system starts damaging our body. The link to viruses here is the hypothesis is that once you got some sort of infection, especially after a sever one, your immune system can be whacked a bit out of balance and it may accidentally misidentify parts of our body as foreign entities. Again, getting an infection increases your risk. * I will add one possible link to viral infections which has one piece of compelling evidence, though I am not yet 100% convinced that it is the right mechanism. The study I am referencing to is an epidemiological study which found a much higher risk (some 30-fold) for MS for folks infected with the Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV). This likelihood is much higher than the link to shingles. However there are two challenges. The first is that almost everyone (90%) of folks are infected with EBV. The authors of the article did a clever design study to be able to follow the few uninfected folks and also look at it longitudinally (i.e. tracking those that were first EBV free and then got infected later in time). Still, the issue with such study design is that there could be statistically anomalies and that the study would be hard to reproduce in that forward. Still, the evidence is very interesting, especially given the huge effect size. The second part is that while there are general hypotheses, the precise mechanism remains elusive. There is an idea to do an empirical experiment. As EBV vaccines are in development, it might be possible in the future to just compare MS rates in vaccinated and unvaccinated folks which could provide more insights into the link.

I think there are a lot of issues and few benefits. The major one being that the major driver of extinction is the reckless destruction of habitats. Even if this was not a stunt (and there are reasons to believe it is) it doesn't address the root problem. If the technology was perfected we basically found a way to make interesting exhibits for zoos but are doing little beyond that.

Pain are not a defense reaction. Though defense reactions, including inflammation responses but also general injuries can cause pain signals. I am also pretty sure that your memory is wrong or folks were telling you wrong things. Most studies show that having shingles increase MS risk. There is no clear link but some assumptions include that the immune response is overreacting to viral infections of nervous tissue and start attacking it (specifically myelin, which causes MS). Other potential pathways are linkages via inflammation pathways. Other viruses, including Epstein-Barr are also linked with increased MS risk. I seriously doubt there are studies that show protective functions.

I think Soros is still recalibrating his space lasers. And I think the autopen for the checks broke.

I think the point I am trying to make is that the trade landscape has changed and expanded massively post WW so any historic comparison will be difficult. Number of players is probably also not a good metric, as, well historically there were way fewer players, and some potential players were still colonies. The most famous large-scale tariffs in the US was probably the Smoot-Hawley act in 1930 and it is being used as an example how economically disastrous this approach is and I don't think that many have attempted something similar after seeing its impacct. Now, obviously no one knows what the actual heck is going on right now in the US, but comparisons that were made just after the announcement (using the weird reciprocal table they had) suggest that in terms of effective tariffs on US imports in percent, it would surpass the Smoot-Hawly. The lattter was wround 20% and the reciprocal tariffs were estimated to land around 24ish, but again, who knows? The administration certainly doesn't.

Depends a lot on the metrics you are using. Global trade has a much higher volume than it had in past times. The current world trade volume is somewhere around 25 trillion. In the 1950 that was about 62 billion according to the world bank. So the absolute impact is much higher. Whether Trump is getting suggestions from Russia or not is probably secondary as whatever he is doing is not really distinguishable from being, you know, a moron.

I think we are about to find out. And the direction it is going is apparently to cover up stupidity, rather than trying to correct it. Probably, though even then I would think (without having any real knowledge on that matter) that for example the relative size and types of economies would matter, too. For example. the US has transitioned from a manufacturing economy to a service economy. While the latter does not ship goods, it still results in a huge amount of money influx (and in many cases more than balances deficits). Likewise, if a smaller country delivers valuable resources to a larger one, but cannot afford the higher-end products that the other economy produces, it can cause an imbalance, but as the larger economy ultimately might make profits within its borders, it is not really a loss. In other words, trade is clearly not a zero-sum game and having someone trying to control it without really understanding it, does not lead to good results. Same issue with central planning of Soviet economy.

Tariffs and trade deficits are not related to debt, however. And generally speaking most do not think that a trade deficit on its own is a meaningful indicator.

Trade wars are also an expression of nationalism and has at least some ideological foundation. Also, one should add that the idea of free trade was mostly a post WW idea. In some ways protectionism was the norm rather the exception in the olden days.

Maybe beside the point, but while this four occupations categorization goes all the back to the Zhou dynasty and while certain parts of the hierarchy tend to be fairly stable, the esteem for farmers moved a bit around. While they were placed above merchants, they were still considered part of the lower class during Tang. I think (and might misremember) the elevation of farmers coincided somewhat with the decline of aristocracy and the rise of scholar-officials in the following Song period. Merchants had always and interesting mix as they had significant practical power due their wealth (and had means for social mobility by sponsoring family and other folks to participate in Imperial exams) but despite that, or perhaps because of that, they had low social standing. I think the Chinese might see it as double insult. One, disregarding the technological standing of China, but also two, the attempt to use the term peasant as an insult. Though I suspect that the latter might be more an issue with older folks as the younger ones,

If one wanted to be systematic, one would need to 1) list out all ingredients and their respective concentrations. 2) identify all toxicological data for each ingredient and sort by level of evidence. There are different levels of evidence ranging e.g. from cell cultures, which can be fairly far away for some toxic indicators, to animal tests to evidence in humans. The latter is usually the best but they are rare as we do not purposefully harm folks (hopefully). 3) identify evidence for trickier aspects of toxicity, such as long-term use (e.g., evidence for bioaccumulation, carcinogenic effects, etc.) 4) estimate a threshold value that can be generally considered to be safe 5) compare point 1) with all these aspects and provide a best estimate of potential harm. The toxicological knowledge will evolve over time if people do more research.

It is astonishing to me that folks are talking about a constitutional crisis, yet the broader reaction to this is in the population is muted, to put it mildly. Approval rating still sit at around 40%, for example.

Not precisely my field, but I think evidence is mounting that inflammation and associated interactions with our immune system are some of the major drivers of dementia. This comes from different areas of research and is not limited to viral infections. For example, major surgery also triggers inflammation pathways and in patients with stronger responses, the likelihood of rapid dementia onset is higher.

They wrote a beautiful letter....

You and me, brother. I do some work in that area and it ain't a pretty picture I am seeing.

In a narrowly defined topic, for sure. Take medical health experts and ask them whether there is a net benefit of population-wide measles vaccination in terms of overall health burden, you will get very clear answers from actual experts. The reason is that this question is a) anchored on a set of metrics that are well defined (health burden is perhaps a bit vague but is used here as a proxy of a whole range of measures that can be used) b) is based well-understood mechanisms, and c) has a host of both, research as well as empirical data that clearly point at a conclusion. This is not a good example of an attempt at a very narrow space. The issue here is "success". You could instead ask the question: how do tariffs impact aggregate wealth? This could result in much more targeted arguments. Also, while I do not have specific expertise, I doubt that there are many economists who would argue that broad tariffs are somehow going to increase aggregate wealth. The negative impact on the economy are fairly well-known but I have not seen an honest argument how it would increase wealth. Also, things are usually not a just a simple pro and con, but about what possible mechanisms are there and what the impacts of these issues are. As mentioned already, the more we know, the easier it is to form a consensus. There is no good reason to assume that a consensus can never be formed, we have in fact many of those.