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> It’s ironic that an Indian author would, I believe, have no trouble writing a story about an American who took care of fifty cats, but the reverse situation is considered racist or bigoted.

People are still saying this kind of thing in 2023? It only seems ironic if you have a naive, 2015-era understanding of wokeness. In reality, it's in perfect harmony with the principles of wokeness and should be viewed by no one as ironic, contradictory, or surprising.

The core principle of wokeness is not "races should be treated equally," but rather "white bad, black good." Take a set of controversial issues and try using each of these principles to predict the woke position. Your predictions will be far better using the latter.

With that context in mind, of course an Indian man will face fewer restrictions than a white man in getting published. How is it ironic or noteworthy?


Wakanda - "It's ok if we do it".


Agreed, but the reader is left with the impression that the author is a Stanford graduate, well off despite his young age, and full of spontaneous energy. If we consider this to be the primary goal of the piece, then it did its job well.


Way too many parameters to be interesting. Talk about fitting an elephant.


Yeah, this is one of the big misunderstandings of our era.

The American culture is not the object we call "the American culture," which is held up for our ridicule and hatred. Rather, it's the holding up of the object and the ridiculing and the hating. The American culture is what is happening around us.


One of the things that struck me when I took LSD for the first time is that pop culture gets a surprising amount right about going insane. There were aspects of the experience that felt familiar from TV shows and movies. In hindsight, it makes sense: the people who create those depictions are doing their best to capture the real thing, and not just making up stories that sound cool.

Similarly, I think a lot of skeptics will be surprised when they're dying and realize that the pop culture tropes are fairly accurate. Memories being replayed in vivid detail, a light at the end of a tunnel, etc. Where do you think these ideas are coming from if not first-hand experience?


Trump vindicated


Psychologists have been discounted for quite some time now.

But also, what would it even mean to say that Myers-Briggs is wrong? If you pick 4 personality traits and create 16 groups from them, then knowing someone's group will always give you insight into their personality.


It's not wrong, it's not clinically useful in the same way that horoscopes are not clinically useful.


You have to consider what kind of pressure Zuckerberg is under as he builds the Metaverse. His employees and early users are mostly left-wing activist types, who are intensely prudish when it comes to sex. In Zuckerberg's circles, the most common complaint you hear is that the Metaverse lacks enough features to prevent women from being virtually groped. Considering how sterile Horizon Worlds is now, I can only imagine the feedback he would be getting if he allowed the same kind of erotic content as VR Chat.


Agreed. Baldness is not even remotely a serious problem, if it's a problem at all. However, it's interesting because:

- It seems easy compared to other medical problems

- There's a ton of money on the line for whoever solves it

- It still hasn't been solved

These things together don't inspire a lot of confidence in people who say we are close to curing aging, cancer, mental illness, chronic pain, etc. It almost feels like we are living before the dawn of medical science.


Apparently the CDC literally changed its definition. From the Miami Herald (but you can check against other sources):

> Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

Webster dictionary broadened its definition too. From USA Today:

> Merriam-Webster revised its "vaccine" definition to replace "immunity" with "immune response."


What were non-immunizing vaccines called before? I've seen "intramuscular virus injection", but I don't think that was ever a layman's term.

Have we not always had the concept of sterilising immunity, and therefore non-sterilising immunity?

To me this is just nuance being exposed, and word definitions being updated to include that nuance.


They were called "non-immunising vaccines". viz. this article from 2001:

Development of a non-immunising, paraspecific vaccine from attenuated pox viruses: a new type of vaccine

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12578306/


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