[-] mpk@awful.systems 11 points 9 months ago

Mosquito nets are still an effective intervention against malaria, not least as "there's a vaccine" is a very, very long way from "everyone is vaccinated" especially as really useful interventions such as draining marshland where A. falciparum breeds or attempting to eradicate it with insecticide are substantially harder and, also, take time. Given that half of all deaths from malaria are in children under 5 and that the malaria parasite is not transmitted between humans but from mosquitos to humans the herd immunity effect doesn't really exist if people are still getting bitten. (FWIW, my dad literally wrote a book called "Malaria")

EAs are wrong about a lot of stuff but they're not wrong about malaria eradication being about more than vaccines.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 16 points 11 months ago

He’s on the hunt for that one special female who’s really, really into Ferengi.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 14 points 11 months ago

Dear Mr Anus, it's not anti-AI, it's anti-bullshit and anti-shyster.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 10 points 1 year ago

also why does he think people will take on his "wacky" pronunciation of "Robovan" to rhyme with "gas oven"? I generally leave actually listening to Musk's live ramblings to the professionals but damn, this guy is a terrible public speaker. Has his schtick always consisted mostly of awkward pauses and ers and ums or is this a new thing?

[-] mpk@awful.systems 13 points 1 year ago

how to let people know you're not a talented writer but think you should be without telling people you're not a talented writer but you think you should be

[-] mpk@awful.systems 11 points 1 year ago

"There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama, and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime, and astrology, sensational five-cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator."

[-] mpk@awful.systems 13 points 1 year ago

Seems to be like an awesome way to get tech millionaires with weird ideas about education from reading too much Ayn Rand to cough up 27 grand a year to educate their unfortunate kids.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 13 points 1 year ago

This isn't the UK government or UK public education policy, to be fair on the UK. It's a £27,000-per-year private school in London - the sort that helps ram the possibly-not-so-bright kids of the wealthy through their GCSEs and A-Levels.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 14 points 1 year ago

An "Oops, racism!" incident is pretty much inevitable as well, of course.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 10 points 1 year ago

If you want more crazy, that political party is actually a limited company in which the leader is also the majority shareholder and the bylaws permit him to fire and appoint a majority of directors at will. I’m not sold on whether all those candidates were actually fake, but journalists from more credible outlets than Byline Times are no doubt working on physically tracking down every one off these candidates as we speak to verify their existence or otherwise.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 13 points 1 year ago

Pedants being wrong on the Internet is exactly why I have an OED subscription. :) "Beg the question" in the sense of "to assume without proof" doesn't have a supporting quote newer than 1870, which suggests to me that... yeah, it can be considered obsolete.

[-] mpk@awful.systems 10 points 2 years ago

It’s a sign of how completely economically detached from reality these guys are. The annual turnover threshold here for mandatory VAT registration is around €35k, and a lot of small businesses don’t even reach that. Selling widgets and turning over €50k max would not be considered to be minor tax evasion..

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mpk

joined 2 years ago