I love this. Thank you

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat

It had an archive in the game. It detailed the social structure, military structure, customs, and history of the Clans, which you play as a member of, from an outside perspective. I was only 8, but I read through the whole thing, end-to-end. I put an album of it on Facebook for posterity when I was in high school.

I decided I wanted to be like them when I read it. I have a much better understanding of them now, and I do not agree with everything. The concepts behind some core tenants still stand for me. Individuals are valued within the context of the Clan. One’s value is based on their contribution to society, but society must value them in order to expect their contribution. If a leader acts in their own interest and not that of the Clan, their subordinates are obligated to challenge them. If the conflict stands, they face in a Circle of Equals. Generally, personal disputes are delayed and adjudicated, but there is a Trial of Grievance if the parties can conduct if they cannot delay. In the real world, I translate these to a value in community, a mandate to not tolerate poor leadership, and good practice in letting cooldown time followed by direct dispute resolve conflict.

Of course, there are questionable things. A caste system, though some Clans allow more mobility than others. Eugenics based on combat prowess for the warrior caste. Promotion by combat for the warrior caste. Poor military strategy based on the concept of honor.

I still consider myself a Clanner, to some degree. Sometimes I try to see if others took it as much to heart as I did, but I am afraid of rejection. I do not know if I could pass various Trials. I know I am too old, now, or at the very least, approaching that. Maybe someday, I will find other children of Kerensky.

Woo!!! I want the one with the ears!!!

You haven’t read anything about this. It’s very clear. The first thing you learn is that sex and gender are different. Sex is biology. Gender is identity.

The second thing you learn is that sex is not binary. (And gender, being a social construct, certainly is not set in stone.) Genes may be XX, but maybe some other factor may be preventing that gene from expressing fully or even at all. This can lead to highly androgynous folks or folks with odd genital configurations. It takes genes, gene expression, and hormones for a human to express characteristics of some sex. Not all three of these are perfectly aligned. You can argue that genes control all of it, but that doesn’t stand. Genes can conflict, and environmental factors can affect things.

I learned all that and more in just twenty minutes of reading. Please, go do some homework. Start with “what is the difference between sex and gender,” then let the rabbit hole take you down. At least, that’s the path that helped me learn a bunch of this stuff.

And regarding Dunning-Kruger, the key point is confidence. That said, I’ll caveat all the above I’ve said with this is just stuff that I’ve read from sources that I trust, which I can corroborate with my existing knowledge of genetics and broader biology. I’m not an expert. I can be proven wrong. Most of this is definitions and quite simple stuff, so my confidence is high but still shakeable.

Normally, I’m a stickler about answering asked questions, but your questions seem to be based on a misunderstanding of definitions. Once you get that sorted out, we can try again and maybe learn something together

I found the one with Dunning-Kruger! Do I win a prize???

Ah, good to know! Thank you for correcting me. I’ll edit my other comment

Since many answers aren’t actually answering the question…

My comment is largely wrong!! See the reply below

Most places require a permit to assemble en masse. There are “free speech zones” where you can create large gatherings without any kind of advance notice or permit or whatever. Most universities have a free speech zone towards the middle of their campuses. Cities will also often have at least one but somewhere that doesn’t inconvenience commerce, like a park or near city hall.

Most mass assembly requires a permit and sometimes a fee, even in public places. Following this prevents arrest by “disturbing the peace” or other such laws, usually.

How this squares with the first amendment is interpretation. Individual freedom of speech is protected except very specific public order and safety things, e.g. calling for violence. Coordinated, mass freedom of speech is perceived as a fast path to rioting.

I’m not saying this is right, but this is my understanding of how things work. I’m not a lawyer or an expert in these matters. This is just what I learned from activist friends in my university time ages ago.

As for expulsion, public universities are run by states. To my understand, Trump has no legal mechanism to do this. He’s just talking out of his ass or expects to bully public institutions into expelling students by threatening to withhold department of education funding… but he’s planning to kill that anyway, so 🤷‍♂️

I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. This is my layman’s understanding.

Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it’s costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It’s quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse’s blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse’s immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.

mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.

First, let’s tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do… stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells’ nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can’t be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It’s basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.

What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren’t really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells’ infrastructure to reproduce.

With me so far? Here’s where it gets cool.

What if we could capture a virus’ RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?

This is mRNA, the “m” standing for “messenger.” mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won’t hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.

The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven’t actually checked the numbers, but I’m very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We’d been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren’t yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we’ve learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.

So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They’re also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk? 😅

But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.

But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.

You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?

Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?

I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There’s a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I’ve had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it’s a huge impact on those people

So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it’s career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way

Very cool! Tough jobs. I have a new SQA engineer starting tomorrow. I’m really hoping I can support her well. Wish me luck

I hope all your bugs are easy but interesting and that the customers are kind

Ahahaha this is so obtuse. I love it. Bit of a brain teaser to parse that.

Let me see if I’m understanding correctly. Are you software QA or machine learning validation? Or am I totally off?

I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you’re sick before you feel sick.

Yeah… that sounds like bullshit haha

100/100 for 22,000 KRW/month (about $16.50 USD).

Other options with my provider:

• 500/500 for 35,750 KRW ($26.85)
• 1000/1000 for 41,250 KRW ($31)
• 2500/2500 for 44,000 KRW ($33)
• 5000/5000 for 55,000 KRW ($41.31)
• 10000/10000 for 82,500 KRW ($62)

And that 100/100 is effective. Shit downloads fast

One of many, many reasons I’m not fond of going back to the US. Maybe Europe next, we’ll see. For now, Korea is pretty sweet

Their arguments assume businesses operate in good faith. We fundamentally know that it’s not true, from overseas child labor by fast fashion to coal mining to IT security. This economist of theirs can fuck off

It makes me sad the site seems to be pushing crypto. Or maybe it’s that crypto bros keep referencing the event? Chicken and egg? I dunno

I was going to post something like this. Thank you for your service

In pointing out one’s deficiencies, you should help them fill in those gaps. Otherwise, you’re just being an asshole.

Explain what communism is. Comprehensive education in communism is not part of many places’ standard curriculum

Aye, you know your stuff, too. I think we may just work in very differently structured applications.

The systems I mostly work with tend to be transactional. They also don’t have any mobile client - everything is web based. I guess I’m assuming that most engineers are doing basic, stateless web things. Our system is running 6 microservices, one storage-as-a-service system (think s3), and PostgreSQL. The app is quite memory heavy due to large (~4GB) images, but tiling and other optimizations keep that manageable. All of this fits on one MacBook Pro running things in Docker without much issue.

All that said, I can definitely understand support for mobile ballooning the resource needs by a ton. Alternatively, if you have more microservices or need to include any kind of data pipelining, that could do it, too. We work on our data pipelining as separate work with only a subset of microservices, and it keeps that side manageable.

Can I ask, beyond mobile and database, what the heaviest part of your stack is? I’ve been in the same space for some years now, so it’s fun to hear about other areas