skybrian's recent activity

  1. Comment on Memecoin trading at levels last seen before crypto bubble burst in ~finance

    skybrian
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    From the article (archive): ... Also: Lure of Quick Money Sees $100M Flow to Solana Meme Coin 'Presales' Also: Solana memecoin Slerf accidentally burns $10 million worth of funds raised from...

    From the article (archive):

    Considered as some of the most speculative and volatile cryptocurrencies, memecoins such as Dogwifhat and Pepe are far outstripping the gains registered by market bellwether Bitcoin that has dominated the headlines. Trading volume for the top memecoins, which often trade for a fraction of a cent, reached nearly $80 billion in the past week, according to data compiled by blockchain data firm Kaiko. That’s the highest since October 2021.

    ...

    Pepe, a frog-themed coin, and dogwifhat — a dog pictured wearing a hat — continued racking up fresh highs in the past week, according to tracker CoinGecko. The total market value of the memecoin sector has reached more than $60 billion on Wednesday.

    Also:

    Lure of Quick Money Sees $100M Flow to Solana Meme Coin 'Presales'

    Raising millions of dollars appears not to require a working product, a white paper, a long-term plan or even a meme picture in some parts of the crypto market. These days, a simple post on X announcing a so-called presale can attract millions of dollars in Solana’s SOL token.

    Presales are events where tokens are nominally sold before the official launch. They are typically conducted by sending funds to a crypto address and receiving, at a later date, a predetermined number of tokens.

    Also:

    Solana memecoin Slerf accidentally burns $10 million worth of funds raised from presale investors

    A new Solana-based memecoin, Slerf, has faced significant challenges after the project’s developer accidentally burnt a major portion of the token supply — effectively losing $10 million, or the entirety, of presale participants’ money.

    And Matt Levine writes:

    If this were a company, and Slerf was a stock, this would all be bad: It is bad for a company to lose all of the money it raises in a stock offering. (Also, though, it would probably be reversible. If a company just lost its list of shareholders, it could probably, like, go back through its emails and reconstruct the list.)

    But Slerf is not a company or a stock: It is a crypto token, so absolutely nothing matters. Except that this is all sort of funny, and attention-grabbing, so of course Slerf went up. Arnold: “This mistake was very good for attention, and attention is the true value of any memecoin. So the obvious thing happened and the new tokens that were released shot up around 5,000%.” You could spend another 10 hours and 55 minutes pondering this but I do not recommend it.

    4 votes
  2. Comment on The Dunning-Kruger effect is autocorrelation in ~science

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    For a student, if you ask if they did above average (on a test, say), another reasonable thing to do is compare themselves to other students in the same class. We simply don't know. It's important...

    For a student, if you ask if they did above average (on a test, say), another reasonable thing to do is compare themselves to other students in the same class.

    We simply don't know. It's important for any survey to know the exact question asked, and ideally, they would also ask people what they were thinking when they answered in a certain way.

  3. Comment on Is a NAS for me? in ~tech

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Running Docker containers sounds pretty nice. Any downsides to that versus other ways of doing things?

    Running Docker containers sounds pretty nice. Any downsides to that versus other ways of doing things?

    1 vote
  4. Comment on Vitamin D: the basics, Shannon’s story, the evidence in ~health

    skybrian
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    This is a three-part review by a parathyroid surgeon of what’s known about Vitamin D. From the first blog post: … … … Going on to part 2: She goes on to describe a case where a patent took 5000 IU...

    This is a three-part review by a parathyroid surgeon of what’s known about Vitamin D.

    From the first blog post:

    Most studies follow this pattern: Two sets of people are evaluated. One set has a certain disease (diabetes, for example). The other set does not have the disease. Vitamin D levels are measured in both groups. Vitamin D deficiency is found to be much more common in the group of diseased individuals.

    Using this study method, Vitamin D deficiency is correlated with many diseases. But correlation does not equal causation. The fact that two things are related does not imply that one caused the other.

    But the temptation to equate correlation and causation is strong. Many articles showing a correlation with Vitamin D will add an untested but completely plausible physiological explanation for how low vitamin levels could lead to the disease. Armed with a solid correlation and a reasonable argument for causation, they may feel justified in concluding that the evidence for causation is strong. And once you have made that leap, you are almost obligated in recommending Vitamin D supplementation for anyone affected by or concerned about your disease of interest.

    Vitamin D is a hormone that binds to the Vitamin D Receptor, a protein made by cells throughout your body. The vitamin acts like a key, while the receptor is a lock. A key and lock are pointless individually, but useful together. Vitamin D and its receptor are inactive until they combine, and then they interact with DNA to produce certain actions within the cell. Based on what we already know, it is easy to understand why the intestines, parathyroids, and bones make Vitamin D Receptors – these organs are all involved in regulating calcium levels, and we know Vitamin D regulates calcium metabolism. But those are not the only organs that have the receptors. We find these receptors all over the place, in the kidneys, lungs, pancreas, uterus, and blood cells involved in immune function, just to name a few.(4,5)

    Unfortunately, we do not have a full unified explanation for how Vitamin D deficiency could lead to the list of diseases that are associated with it. We know the correlations are there, and we can show that the Vitamin D molecule has an effect on multiple cells and organs. But this is clearly not as straightforward as the role of Vitamin D in calcium metabolism and bone health.

    Going on to part 2:

    We think of vitamins and supplements differently. A few readers have made comments like this: “I understand that the evidence for Vitamin D in healthy adults doesn’t really show a benefit, but I take Vitamin D because it probably won’t hurt me, and it might help.” This is a common sentiment regarding supplements, but not a statement that most people would make about metoprolol, or any prescribed medication. Medications are generally understood to be substances taken in response to a specific disease or condition, and we hope that research has shown that they work. Supplements are given a pass; we take them if they might help, even though they may not be needed.

    She goes on to describe a case where a patent took 5000 IU of Vitamin D for 5 years on the advice of a doctor, stopped taking it, but it took six months to recover.

    Of course, there is a selection bias in who comes to me. There are people out there doing just fine on 5000 units of Vitamin D daily. I only see the ones who develop high calcium levels. But I see enough of them to know that this is not an exceptionally rare occurrence. I have been to lectures in which physicians have claimed that Vitamin D toxicity almost never occurs. In my experience, this is false. I have seen many cases of Vitamin D toxicity in people who were taking the recommended dose from an over-the-counter bottle.

    Part 3 is a review of the major studies and ends with these recommendations:

    1. Recognize that Vitamin D is not a panacea. It is an essential hormone, definitely, but not a magical pill that will ward off disease. […]

    2. Use a reasoned approach to supplementation. There are benefits to Vitamin D in cases of severe deficiency (not mild deficiency). If you are elderly, frail, and not getting sunlight, there is a chance you are significantly deficient in Vitamin D. If you think you may be deficient, you can check this with a blood test.

    3. Act in moderation. Low to moderate doses of Vitamin D (e.g. 400 to 2000 IUs daily) have proven to be safe in trials. If you think there is a benefit and we just don't have enough data to prove it yet, you may be right. We do know the harms of taking too much, though, so supplement in moderation. And if you are taking Vitamin D, ask your doctor to check your blood levels.

    13 votes
  5. Comment on Idaho needs doctors: But many don't want to come in ~health

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I quoted more from that part of the article, but it does talk about the other things going on and doesn’t claim it’s just one thing. The anti-abortion laws seem to be a larger factor for...

    I quoted more from that part of the article, but it does talk about the other things going on and doesn’t claim it’s just one thing.

    The anti-abortion laws seem to be a larger factor for obstetricians than other specialties, for obvious reasons.

    7 votes
  6. Comment on IronLev has demonstrated the first-ever magnetic levitation test on regular train tracks in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Yes, they are using permanent magnets according to this page: Also:

    Yes, they are using permanent magnets according to this page:

    It is also passive in its nature, based on a special configuration of permanent magnets. Thus IronLev allows objects to levitate without the need for external electrical power.

    Also:

    The next objectives include the development of an additional motorised trolley to arrive at a test of a complete vehicle, weighing up to 20 tonnes and with speeds of up to 200 km/h.

    The first commercial applications will be people-mover transport systems for sustainable […] low-noise mobility solutions in urban environment.

    4 votes
  7. Comment on IronLev has demonstrated the first-ever magnetic levitation test on regular train tracks in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    Well, sure, but the way I see it is that it's a different system, so other companies' experiences with different maglev systems doesn't tell us much about this one.

    Well, sure, but the way I see it is that it's a different system, so other companies' experiences with different maglev systems doesn't tell us much about this one.

    7 votes
  8. Comment on IronLev has demonstrated the first-ever magnetic levitation test on regular train tracks in ~transport

    skybrian
    Link
    Unfortunately it seems there's not a lot about it on the web other than from the company itself? I wonder about safety.

    Unfortunately it seems there's not a lot about it on the web other than from the company itself?

    I wonder about safety.

    2 votes
  9. Comment on Why are there so many car washes? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems like any business. There are risks and whoever is doing it will need to understand what they're getting into.

    It seems like any business. There are risks and whoever is doing it will need to understand what they're getting into.

    3 votes
  10. Comment on A startling rise in sea-surface temperatures suggests that we may not understand how fast the climate is changing in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    If this is just about "might there be non-linear effects," I don't think anyone would say no. I'm not a climatologist but talk about tipping points isn't new and there multiple ways it might...

    If this is just about "might there be non-linear effects," I don't think anyone would say no. I'm not a climatologist but talk about tipping points isn't new and there multiple ways it might happen.

    But it's quite another thing to make specific claims that some specific non-linear effect is happening in a particular place, and to try to predict the result.

    But then again, your wording was pretty vague. I interpreted it as saying that the climatologists interviewed in the article were doing something wrong, but maybe you didn't mean it that way?

  11. Comment on A startling rise in sea-surface temperatures suggests that we may not understand how fast the climate is changing in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    The first link is an advocacy piece by someone I don't know, though it seems he has a Wikipedia page. The underlined words are not links. The article lacks references for understanding his sources...

    The first link is an advocacy piece by someone I don't know, though it seems he has a Wikipedia page. The underlined words are not links. The article lacks references for understanding his sources of information. So I don't see it as evidence of anything. There are lots of opinion pieces about climate, so what's so great about this one?

    The second link seems to be about YouTube. I don't get my climate news from YouTube and I doubt climatologists do either, so it doesn't seem all that relevant?

    1 vote
  12. Comment on Why are there so many car washes? in ~finance

    skybrian
    Link
    From the article: ... ... ...

    From the article:

    “[S]aturation bans” have emerged in nearby northeast Ohio cities such as Stow and Parma, Cleveland Scene reports. In Buffalo, New York, a surge of suburban car wash openings in 2023 triggered opposition from nearby residents and community members — including the owners of an existing car wash nearby. New Jersey, Louisiana and Alaska are also seeing their own car wash booms as national chains like Mister Car Wash and Zips Car Wash expand.

    Last fall, the planning commission in Lebanon, Tennessee, rejected a permit to build a new Mister Car Wash location, arguing that the largely automated facility wasn’t the best use for a prominent Main Street site. In response, the company is suing.

    In a country with roughly 280 million private cars and trucks, can there be such a thing as too many car washes? A growing number of city leaders seem to think so. Unlike stores, restaurants or other businesses, most self-service car washes don’t pay sales taxes to their host communities. And they don’t bring much else to the table in terms of local benefits, critics argue; like drive-through-only fast-food outlets (which have also been the target of local bans), the latest generation of automated facilities provide few jobs even as they pump out noise, traffic congestion and vehicle emissions.

    But where neighbors might see a too-crowded market, investors see the beginning of a boom. From the Snow Belt to the Sunbelt, companies are scrambling to add locations and grab a piece of a $14 billion-plus industry. With 60,000 locations across the US, the sector has been expanding at roughly 5% annually, with some forecasts predicting the market to double by 2030. More car washes were built in the last decade than all the preceding years combined.

    ...

    The car wash boom reflects a broader shift away from do-it-yourself car care habits. Like changing your own oil, soaping up the family auto in the driveway has increasingly become an artifact of decades past: The number of washes done at professional facilities jumped from 50% in 1996 to 79% in 2021, according to the International Car Wash Association.

    ...

    In recent years, car wash evolution has mirrored trends in technology and business practices, namely the replacement of human workers with machines. A chain called Benny’s in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is credited with pioneering the “express exterior” model, with automated payment kiosks. These mostly unmanned tunnels now make up a bulk of the industry’s revenues, said Wulf, since they allow owners to slash labor and maintenance costs and obtain bulk savings on chemicals and other supplies. Even the industry that manufactures the technology and machines used at these locations has consolidated and vertically integrated, with Dover and National Car Wash Solutions dominating the market.

    Water use has also declined as technology has improved: According to Rickwood, current technology uses about 50 gallons a wash, 80% of which is recycled. Going DIY with a hose and a bucket typically requires 150 gallons.

    ...

    But the industry’s biggest recent innovation involves its business model, which has increasingly focused on membership and recurring revenue.

    Mister Car Wash, a chain picked up by private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners that has gone public and now has more than 400 US locations, was an early developer of subscription offerings. Users pay a monthly fee for unlimited washes, with plans starting around $20 a month before adding services like waxes and wheel polishes. (A basic a-la-carte wash runs for about $10 each.)

    In analyzing usage patterns, the industry soon found that the convenience of wash memberships translated to higher profits. A typical non-member may come in three or four times a year, while a typical member gets that many washes each month. But at $20 a month, that’s a huge jump in annual spending — more than enough to cover the costs of accommodating heavy users who may scrub their SUVs dozens of times a month.

    5 votes
  13. Comment on Surprising detail in New York bank records helped a historian bust a longstanding myth about Irish immigrants in ~humanities.history

    skybrian
    Link
    From the interview: ... ... ... ... ...

    From the interview:

    Ever since the [potato] famine immigrants arrived, Americans were convinced that they could not succeed in America. In those days, it took a lot of resources to make it to the United States. The journey from Europe was 35 days … You had to bring your own food. You had to make it to Liverpool, and so you had to have a good amount of money to come to the States. Typical immigrants to the United States were fairly well off.

    With the Great Potato Famine, where all of a sudden millions of people are starving in Ireland, people are fleeing and they get on ships even though they don’t have 35 days’ supply of food. And they just figure, somehow, they have to make it, because it’s life or death. They get to America half-starved. And many of them are discriminated against because they’re Catholic. Americans thought, “The Irish, they can’t succeed here. They’re too poor. They’re too Catholic. They don’t have the capital — the resources — that other immigrants had brought with them.”

    And then through the generations, historians started making the same argument. In part, that was because it was just impossible to trace Irish famine immigrants and find out what had happened to them. There were just too many with the same names, hundreds and hundreds of Murphys and Kellys and Sullivans.

    ...

    I had another book planned, but all the while I kept thinking, these bank records are just so insanely good, because they have so much biographical detail about each depositor. You could see what happened to them, because it listed so much detail about their families and where they came from in Ireland when they arrived in the United States. And then over the years, as their occupations changed, as their addresses changed, they would give that information to the bank, and so you could trace them. And then even people who only had bank accounts for a few months could be traced. There was so much biographical detail in the bank records that allowed you to tell one Michael Sullivan from the next. After I started researching the whole of Irish in New York, and not just Five Points, I saw that the upward mobility for the famine Irish was really quite remarkable.

    ...

    As I went from having 10 lives to 100 lives to 1,000 lives, I came up with codes (for different types of jobs) and tallied it up. What I found in the end was 41% of the people who started out as day laborers and other unskilled positions end up at the end of their lives as business owners or other white-collar jobs.

    Nobody — even the experts in Irish American history — nobody imagined that four in 10 day laborers could end up in white-collar jobs. This is just inconceivable to anyone who had ever thought about the famine Irish given the obstacles that faced them.

    ...

    [Prejudice] also manifested itself in advertisements in American newspapers saying, “no Irish need apply.” Those were pretty rare, because most newspapers refused to publish them. When they did publish them, people boycotted their newspapers. But every once in a while, one got in. And even though those were relatively rare, they were so well remembered and so outraged the Irish that it scarred them.

    Lacking employment opportunities means it’s harder to climb the socioeconomic ladder because you can’t advance to the higher-paying, white-collar jobs as easily as native-born Americans can. The result, however, is in some ways beneficial to the Irish, because what the Irish then do is they concentrate in terms of their aspirations in self-employment, starting their own small businesses. Because your boss can’t discriminate against you if you’re the boss.

    So Irish immigrants are much more likely to start businesses than native-born Americans in that era. Just like today, immigrants are much more likely to start small businesses than native-born Americans. And that’s not a coincidence.

    ...

    I talk towards the end of the book about this one guy who is a gardener for his first 10 years in America. He saves enough money as a gardener to open a saloon in Manhattan, just south of the George Washington Bridge. He opens a saloon up there, which he can afford to do on his gardener savings, because it’s kind of out of the way. But the city grows, and it grows around where he set up the saloon. He runs it for 30 years. And when he dies, they come and evaluate his possessions for probate purposes. And this house has hardly anything in it. And they say $30 worth of possessions is all he has. But he also has this tiny safe. And the judge allows them to open it.

    There are bank books from 30 different banks. It turned out he had the equivalent of about $1 million today in 30 different bank accounts and government bonds and real estate, and he owned whole blocks of northern Manhattan as part of his real estate holdings. That was the kind of thing you did when you were scarred so much by the famine.

    ...

    In your tenement in Five Points, or pretty much any place in New York in those days, there were no locks on the doors. So you either had to carry your money in your pockets or put it in the bank. Tenement apartment robberies were common.

    The other thing was, banks paid really high interest rates. Today, you put your money in your checking account, you get 0.1%. The Emigrant Savings Bank paid 6% or 7% interest every year, whether it was good times or bad. That’s huge.

    If you’ve come from a place like Ireland where you’ve been so poor — somebody’s willing to pay you 6% or 7% interest, that’s a lot of money that you’re throwing away if you don’t put your money in the bank.

    And as a result, what we can tell is that at the very least, half of Irish New Yorkers had bank accounts, and probably a lot more. And studies even show that Irish immigrants, were more likely to have bank accounts than native born Americans.

    11 votes
  14. Comment on A startling rise in sea-surface temperatures suggests that we may not understand how fast the climate is changing in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    I don't know why you're assuming bad faith. Even though predicting climate change is difficult, climatologists still try to do the best they can. What do you think they should do instead?

    I don't know why you're assuming bad faith. Even though predicting climate change is difficult, climatologists still try to do the best they can. What do you think they should do instead?

    4 votes
  15. Comment on How a solar revolution in farming is depleting world’s groundwater in ~enviro

    skybrian
    Link Parent
    It seems that solar power changed the economics. Since it requires no fuel, there's little incentive to conserve water. (Maybe there are other ways the technology improved, too.) I wonder about...

    It seems that solar power changed the economics. Since it requires no fuel, there's little incentive to conserve water. (Maybe there are other ways the technology improved, too.)

    I wonder about windmills though? Haven't wind pumps been around for a long time?

    7 votes