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Orange Man Bad: Part 2

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  It’s been a couple days and I’m still very sad about the 2024 US elections. A true one-party sweep has occurred, and it’s not the party I would have chosen. Neither party particularly represents me well, but the Republicans have taken such a dark turn in the past decade that I am truly fearing for the future of democracy and any semblance of peace the world may have been stumbling toward.  Grappling with the ramifications for the country -and the world- is a big pile of shit to eat.  Grappling with how people I love voted for this is also a big pile of shit to eat.  I can think of three ways to digest these piles. First is the ‘ignore’ option. Push it all away, try not to think about it. Second is to rage against these facts. Lash out at the world and my loved ones who helped to bring this world about. (One of my sons is going through this process now) Third is to desperately hope that I’m wrong about all my presuppositions that build my convictions that lead me to...
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Trusting Expertise

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I think that American conservative trust in mass media is a sub-issue, underneath a broader one. Which is how much trust they put in institutions and expertise in general. Educational, governmental, scientific, etc. Being raised Young Earth Creationist and imbibing a constant diet of Rush Limbaugh & Co. I'm very familiar with the posture of skepticism towards institutions. But I've moved away from that posture because I’ve come to believe it's generally powered by three inaccurate epistemological presuppositions. First, is naïve realism: the idea that what we perceive is what is unquestionably real. How we interpret it must be how it is. One of the really cool things the scientific process (and institutions) has taught us is that our natural intuitions are very often shockingly wrong. (It’s very unintuitive that we are on an oblate spheroid spinning a thousand miles an hour.) When scientific institutions DO misfire, it's generally when the theories reinforce our...
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A Covid Mask Prediction

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In speaking with several other covid conscious people I got a very nicely detailed prediction I wanted to record for posterity. They do not want to be credited with this out of concern for messenger-shooting. So I asked them if I could post it here anonymously and they agreed. Anon:"We are going to have mask requirements. I've done the math on all the possible interventions, and masks are the only one which can get the Rt down below 1 and actually stop the pandemic. Without masks, you can't do it; the other tools put together just aren't good enough (the best one, air filtration, maxes out at 80% effective, and so does Far-UVC, and this simply isn't enough with the infectiousness of Covid -- short-range transmission, which neither intervention stops, will keep it going at pandemic levels). Therefore we're going to get masks. I don't know how many maskless people will die before we get masks. But the math is inescapable. We start using respirator masks. Or m...
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Covid: 4 Years Later

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Before I begin let me quickly sketch the readers I'm writing this for, so you can decide if it's worth your 10 minutes. Firstly, this is for those of you who are at least somewhat sympathetic to people who are still worried about Covid and are sincerely curious why we are this way. I'm trying to present our case as coherently as I can, with references. (As well as I, a not-quite-professional writer can.) I'd like to convince you our stance is not based on fear, hypochondria, conspiracy theory, etc. But based on peer reviewed science. I'm also writing for myself and other folks who are taking Covid very seriously. I'm an ambassador by nature, so I like to facilitate understanding between groups where there is none. Many in my cohort simply cannot fathom how most of the world is not seeing the problem. Here's the agenda. First I'll quickly cover history of this pandemic, then some of what the science says about infectious disease and protecting ourselves....
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