CharonY

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/who-deeply-frustrated-by-lack-of-us-transparency-on-covid-origin-data/ Even if such an assessment was weightier, the DOE's lean toward the lab leak hypothesis is still a minority view within the US intelligence community. Of nine intelligence community entities that have reviewed SARS-CoV-2 origin data, only two—the DOE and the FBI—have tilted toward a lab leak. Five favor the hypothesis of a natural "spillover" event from wild animals (four agencies and the National Intelligence Council), while the remaining two entities say there is not enough data to sway opinions toward either hypothesis.

Yes of course, but though I think getting certain things right with local nuances requires a lot of effort (but then it depends on how deep you want to go the authentic route). But I think that is a separate discussion to (happily) geek out on.

I think, that they do not assign probability, it is more likely an assessment of whether natural or wet market exposure is more likely or lab leak. The low confidence indicates that the evidence level for the decision is low.

As I am sure you know BSL2 is more enhanced than a regular 101 (which generally are BSL1). And most animal viruses work (that are not known to infect humans) are handled at BSL2 containment levels. FBI and DoE both are swinging towards lab leak as the probable source with low to moderate confidence (indicating lack of evidence), whereas four other agencies swing toward natural exposure (also low confidence) and three further which are undecided. So basically we do not know. I am not too surprised that FBI and DoE are thinking more in terms of lab-leak as they are more in tune with specifically these types of risk.

It depends on where you are, I think. Some restaurants have to have their ingredients delivered by specialized importers. While things are a bit easier specific seafood and certain vegetables can be rather tricky to get in high quality. Then there are of course specialized items soy sauces from specific brewers which you might not find in regular grocery stores and so on. There is also the topic of authenticity which often boils down to local family traditions (hence the cultural aspects) which sometimes is not well captured based on recipes you find. Also, certain dishes take a really long time to prepare and/or require specialized equipment. Not a knock on your wife, but contrary to what I stated earlier, when we go away from general cooking and are talking about specialties, there is often a skill gap due to preparing and optimizing dishes over years.

I think what folks have not realized is that our knowledge in functional genomics has turned the entire nurture vs nature debate on its head. In the past, there was often a kind of genetics first assumption, in which certain traits conditions etc. where often assumed to be genetic. If for example a certain ethnic group showed something different, genetics was a plausible explanation. This was also a reason why GWAS were eagerly anticipated and were hoped to reveal the basis for many diseases, conditions and traits. This has fizzled out somewhat, and our improved understanding of functional genetics (and its dynamics) played a big role in explaining why that is the case. Realistically and increasingly folks would actually provide more stringent evidence of a genetic basis (after all, we finally can do that) before claiming a strong genetic basis. At minimum, the basic assumption should realistically be both, with a bit more bias on the nurture side, when it comes to dynamic behaviour.

That is a fantastic point and one of the many reasons big chains make me sad. Small restaurants often represent an important aspect of culture. Especially authentic "ethnic" food can be an incredible ambassador. Homogenized it us to me, a severe loss. That being said, it also seems economically almost inevitable, considering rising labour cost.

It really depends on the ecosystem of restaurants, though. Restaurant chains are increasingly replacing family restaurants. While the quality can vary in the latter, the former (especially large chains) use a lot of pre-processed food which tend to be higher in sugar and other rather unhealthy components. However, certain restaurants, especially those that traditional include a lot of vegetable in their dishes are likely to be fairly healthy. At least as long as they are not replaced by fast-food style variants. The main difference I found between mid-range restaurant chefs (i.e. where food is still more relevant than the whole dining experience) and really good homecooks is often just organization, sourcing of ingredients, speed and consistency.

Regular journals are listed in citation databases (e.g. web of science), which are also the foundation of impact factors. It can also help to check how frequently an article has been cited. Neither is perfect, but it is at least something.

I think an important aspect regarding homelessness is to look at their causes, rather than subscribing to a punitive "quick fix after it is broken" solution. There are of course quite a few, but certain things, such as a better social welfare system, can help to catch folks before they end up being homeless in the first place. Another interesting aspect is a lot of focus in this thread is on meth and opioid abuse, but the most common substance associated with homelessness is alcohol. However, substance abuse is often not the driving factor. Studies have shown different factors, often related to age. For example, a UK study found that in young folks, homelessness was associated with child abuse or general disruptive childhood experiences (e.g. family breakup). A factor that determines long-term homelessness that is often mentioned is whether they have a family home to return to. In adults, economic pressures are the most common explanation and determinants include e.g. access to social housing. Especially in older adults, disruptive personal events (job loss, death of family relative etc) have been more prevalent. As such there is no single preventative measure, but there are many areas where social or mental support, as well as general guidance might be preventative.

The critical difference here is consent.

I think the original comments mostly addressed the proposed solution as coming up with an actual solution is obviously much more difficult. However, Markus has outlined a realistic path, but as with most real solutions, they do not give the instant gratification vibe as those solutions outlined in OP promise (but never deliver).

In Finland the rate of homelessness was reduced from 20k to around 3k. It is not a seasonal thing. Exceptionalism is often used as an excuse not to change systems. Luckily, there are folks who are actually doing research on the matter instead giving up before doing anything. As mentioned, it is not a golden bullet, but cost is not the biggest issue. Homelessness incurs costs, too and many of the implemented programs are near cost neutral or are at least favourable compared to other measures.

Similar programs have been implemented in various sizes throughout Europe and NA. While it was not always a perfect success, especially in the short term, it does seem to be one of the most successful intervention strategy.

I think Markus explained very well why the proposal just would not solve the issue and others have chimed in on the legal ramifications. Now if we want to move into the realm of realistic solutions, there are studies on it that we can turn to, rather than trying tried and failed brute force methods. One of the key elements that Markus described is instilling motivation for change. We do know that force does not work. In fact, it may be very well what created a situation that benefits addiction in the first place. In Europe and Canada, there have been "housing first" initiatives, which aims to provide housing, not shelters and use that as a leverage to address e.g. substance abuse or mental illness. It is likely not a perfect solution, but it was found to be at least competitive in cost compared to other initiatives (especially when medical costs are considered) and compared to other measures shows at least trends in the right direction in terms of most indices (i.e. homelessness, health outcomes etc.). It does not work equally well for everyone, but it does move the needle in the right direction. On the other hand, even using historic knowledge using force on people for their own good on that scale and without individual consultations and deliberations has mostly resulted in trauma and even atrocities. I also note that OP has not shown any evidence how that has helped in the past, while others have mentioned negative outcomes. And this is fundamentally an issue if we deal with vulnerable or powerless populations using very simplified reasoning. This line of thought does not really take their perspective and trajectory into account, but it is strictly top-down level of thinking. If we remove them and do something magically it will all better, though what really changes is that one does not need to deal with them anymore. This magical thinking is of course only harmful to the people affected which unfortunately makes it very popular. We see similar reasoning for dealing with asylum seekers, folks tried to "help" folks by kidnapping kids into residential schools and/or forced adoptions, folks still try to coerce folks into unneeded medical procedures. The issue is that even if intentions were good (which at times is clearly disputable), it uses a very limited perspective of us vs them, assuming that our perspective and experience is the norm and if we forced everyone into that line, they would improve. Clearly this is not the case and betrays as rather limited perspective on the complexity of the matter.

If you want to argue from the medical side, there is a thing called consent. This supersedes quite a few of the other considerations. Using your argument, it seems you would be also in favor of forcible vaccinations and mandatory diets?

If we ignore ethical issues, that is. I mean it is not that we haven't used that argument in the past and off-hand I cannot think of a good example which we would celebrate as a success story.

The treasury has regular statements breaking the numbers down. Quite a bit is in mutual funds, but also state and local governments, but also foreign investors. The data should be in here somewhere, if you are interested: https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/treasury-bulletin/current.html

Considering how folks have trouble to convince folks to wear masks or keep their vaccinations up to date, in order to prevent a deadly disease, I am fairly sure that this will go over just swell.

It is actually lower now: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/23/1119126863/chinas-slice-of-the-us-debt-pie https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/us-debt-china-top-holder-1-trillion-japan-treasury-fed-2022-7?op=1

The easiest way is to look at papers and emulate their study design for similar questions. You will build up an arsenal of methodologies for certain questions.

Have you some links to share for your assertion for: Because if that is not factual, there would be no reason to look for an data to refute it. Also for context, it seems that about 20% of the US debt is held by the US government, 4% by Japan and about 3.2 % by China.

And I would like to point out again, that here we do an asymmetric conflation. Remember OP started with asking a step ahead, and asking about potential benefits of homophobia. And I think we have pointed out sufficiently that we cannot put all likes/dislikes into the same bin. Sexual orientation has a deep rooted developmental part (but likely not that innate as some might think, just basically immutable at some point). However, feeling uncomfortable to any sexual behaviour is much learned, as we know that there are plenty of folks uncomfortable around public displays of affection (that is why there are or were morality laws in place). So we are basically already talking about very different sets of behaviour, despite the fact that we kind of go in circles every few posts. And this goes to what I mentioned earlier that behaviour is almost always developed in conjunction with environment. That can actually be internal development. The brain and humoral system and whatever is involved does not develop in a fixed program, a lot of things during development influence how it is executed and therefore how things end up. In this case if you basically magically change the brain, you are likely to change the outcome. Which is why the innate discussion never made much sense. The point however, is that barring magical brain changes, there is a very common way to change the brain and that is exposure and learning. As cultural norms change, and e.g. showing affection becomes acceptable, magically more folks are less bothered by it.

You would need to understand the system a bit. I.e. if you hypothesize that the mine releases heavy metals, what is the expected zone of leeching and is there flow through the system? If so, you could select sampling points that targets water before it reaches that expected zone as well as downstream elements (where they should carry contaminants). So this is a bit of a semantic issue and it depends on context. If you talk about the study design, you could for example distinguish monitoring projects (where you observe a system) and one where you manipulate it experimentally and then measure the outcome. But you can also use the the term to determine whether something is wet lab (i.e. doing some sort of analyses) vs data crunching. Studies do not have to be quantitative, but even them the papers outline some sort of question. For example, the authors in the paper you linked outline that there is a knowledge gap regarding the crustaceans in urbanized areas;- the areas in question are interesting since there is data from the 50s but there has been increasing urbanization and pollution since then; and they also compared spatial distribution in between more and less-disturbed areas. So again, a key point is the research question. The methodology follows from there (and generally not the other way round).

This to me does seem observational, rather than experimental. This falls under monitoring or surveillance studies. However, you do need to start of with a question. In this case, you have implicitly stated that you suspect an impact of a (former) copper mine. What you then need to figure out what your control would be. For example, are there aquifers that you can trace up and down stream of the mine? Measuring biodiversity is like measuring any other variable, it is not experimental as such (but can be made subject to manipulation). A very common way of quantifying biodiversity is using Simpson's Diversity Index. But again, this is not a study in itself, just monitoring. A good research study would try to figure out the impact of something on biodiversity. And you would need to set up up your sampling method accordingly.