I have the sensation that US is experiencing a transition similar to what happened to Europe when it went to the middle ages, ruling parties, leveraging religion a lot, tries to control knowledge as a way of controlling ideals/values and, as a colateral, detains progress.
My doubt is if other regions will take the lead like the arab world did during the middle ages or if the whole world will fall under this.
Brazil, with all the things it does wrong, has a very good Consumer Law and regulating agencies (for public interest services like utilities, health, etc..)
The regulating agencies have very user friendly digital channels for the population to complain about companies, specially if they use sludge tactics (which are specially forbidden by the consumer law).
My modus operanti is usually try to contact the company once to solve my problem, and if not possible, I'd open a complaint on the regulating agencias. Usually under 5 working days the company would call me with a very knowledgeable agent, a can-do attitude and the problem is solved quickly.
Each complaint got by the regulated companies will count towards substantial fines at the end of the year (usually into millions of USD).
And this is key, because decisions at companies are always driven by impact, by having those fines, the government gives them a very objective way of measuring the benefit of good service.
I love science fiction because they usually try to play these scenarios in a somewhat feasible future. The 3 Body Problem series (more specifically the 3rd book) goes well into what it would take for humanity to be interestellar even without lightspeed or wormholee tech.
Avoiding spoilers it would basically be through hibernation and/or generational ships. Which basically implies of losing all ties to earth and anyone/anything you left there.
But, then again, why would nations invest in such expensive endeavours if there is no prospect of seeing something back out of it. I imagine only an emergency situation would cause this no?
I've been reading some sci-fi by Kate Elliott lately. While she gets around large distances with the usual FTL tech of sci-fi, in-system space battles hew a little more to physics, so that you get situations like, "Crap! The bad guys fired all their missiles at us! We have sixteen hours to decide what to do ...." Fun stuff.
I bet you're right about emergency situations. On top of that, people have been getting on boats and pushing off into the ocean for at least 25,000 years[1] when there was plenty of good land to keep them occupied. It's not that we're talking the same time scales, but rather the fact that they probably did it despite completely unknown time scales. It makes me wonder if the right philosophy or religion will come along that makes somebody try a generation ship for non-emergency reasons.
I'm reading the sci-fi ExForce series by Craig Alanson. There is jumping (wormholes) and speed of light restrictions where lightseconds, lightminutes, lighthours come in to play. What you see (position of enemy ships) might not be true anymore.
Ah yes! I remember that from "The expanse" as well: "let's do a meeting to decide how to evade the missile!"
I think that Physics-compliant sci-fi novels are more entertaining because the solutions (feasible or not) are more ingenious and the consequences more surprising.
That's a very real concern. A friend of mine has a higher than normal threshold for pain and have permanent injuries as a result. Among other things has walked around on a broken foot for months and failed to register a back injury. All of this then escalated to the point where she feels the pain, but the injuries have become permanent.
I have a similar condition. For me, the issue isn't so much the sensation of the permanent injuries themselves, but rather the constant physical fatigue that comes with them. Since doctors tend to rely heavily on those 1-to-10 pain scales with the little face expressions, it's incredibly hard to be taken seriously when your symptoms don't fit neatly into that system. What's frustrating is that people who can feel the pain early on often have a chance to prevent further damage. I couldn't and doctors couldn't even help me identify that I might have health issues.
I worry a lot about aging, and I'm also afraid of things like tumors or cancers that I might not feel until it's too late. As an example, I can't feel cavities forming and I didn't even notice my wisdom teeth piercing through my gums when I was a teen.
A rheumatologist explained to me that in people with chronic pain from things like arthritis, the brain's pain perception can become permanently altered to register pain that no longer "exists". She explained that the brain itself is really the source of the sensation of pain, and you don't necessarily need a "real" source producing a signal. So one should at least not ignore pain if one can avoid it.
Sure, it just feels like an incomplete justification to completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used. Also, that was just the hypothesized mechanism at play, it may not have been what was actually happening, which is the other "ugh" part to this.
That said, the article may not be fairly representing what happened in the first place, so...
>Sure, it just feels like an incomplete justification to completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used.
Clicking "FDA" in the bit you quoted above takes you to a different page wherein the FDA laments the lack of data around the drug (eg, the "hypothesized mechanism"). It also suggests that the companies intend to work with the FDA more on this.
Was the vote against approval a move to "completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used", or was it a desire to better understand it before saying "okay"?
> Was the vote against approval a move to "completely prevent a drug from entering the market and being used", or was it a desire to better understand it before saying "okay"?
Why do you present this as an either/or?
> Clicking "FDA" in the bit you quoted above takes you to a different page
Indeed, where I found that...
> That said, the article may not be fairly representing what happened in the first place, so...
...this is exactly what happened, i.e. I was successfully misled even before reaching your false dichotomy. Yay.
I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to answer your first question before coming to the conclusion that I was using a false dichotomy.
I didn't intend to present it as an "either/or", though I can see how it can be read that way. I simply read you saying that they "completely prevent[ed]" something from coming to market when, perhaps, they're not "completely" doing anything and are open to doing it provided that they know more about it. That the "incomplete justification" you lamented may also have been how the FDA felt about the data provided to them.
It could also be for other reasons, absolutely! This is just one possibility that seems very obvious to me. There's no either/or from my end.
> I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to answer your first question before coming to the conclusion that I was using a false dichotomy.
If I didn't already conclude that you presented a false dichotomy, why would I have inquired about why you did so? It's also not set in stone; from your reply I can just change my mind afterwards. But why do it in two rounds when I can do it in one?
I understand if I came across as hostile though, I admit it was sadly reflexive, and I apologize.
> perhaps, they're not "completely" doing anything and are open to doing it provided that they know more about it.
That's not a nuance I intended to disregard. Yes, I understand they can revisit the drug's approval later, didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
Especially when it's sometimes hard to read tone, even moreso from a stranger whose communication style we're unfamiliar with. Even harder still, comments online generally don't lend themselves well to nuance and assumptions can easily be made, such as my leaning too heavily on your use of the word "completely"! Should we hug it out?
Zuck Says Ads Aren’t The Way To Monetize Messaging, WhatsApp Will Prioritize Growth Not Subscriptions
"Monetization was the big topic on today’s analyst call after Facebook announced it acquired WhatsApp for a jaw-dropping total of $19 billion. That’s $4 billion in cash and $12 billion in stock, and it reserved $3 billion in restricted stock units to retain the startup’s employees. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, CFO David Ebersman, and WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum all said that won’t be a priority for the next few years. And when the time does come to monetize aggressively, it won’t be through ads"
Your link shows a peak at the time you mention but the interest in subsequent months has been around 4 times higher than it was prior to the inauguration, so it seems inaccurate or even misleading to say that demand has "vanished."
But from my first days experience I can safely say that 300 searches a month is a low number for entry pricing. And given that I'm in a developing country, the entry pricing is also not cheap enough.
Man, they will have a hard time when they start working. There is no blocking if you have to collaborate with someone, if they don't learn how solve conflicts they will suffer a lot.
My doubt is if other regions will take the lead like the arab world did during the middle ages or if the whole world will fall under this.
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