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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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How copyright filters lead to wage-theft

Last week, "Marina" - a piano teacher who publishes free lessons her Piano Keys Youtube channel - celebrated her fifth anniversary by announcing that she was quitting Youtube because her meager wages were being stolen by fraudsters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcyOxtkafMs

Marina posted a video with a snatch of her performance of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata," published in 1801. The composition is firmly in the public domain, and the copyright in the performance is firmly Marina's, but it still triggered Youtube's automated copyright filter.

A corporate entity - identified only by an alphabet soup of initialisms and cryptic LLC names - had claimed Ole Ludwig Van's masterpiece as their own, identifying it as "Wicca Moonlight."

Content ID, the automated Youtube filter, flagged Marina's track as an unauthorized performance of this "Wicca Moonlight" track. Marina appealed the automated judgement, which triggered a message to this shadowy LLC asking if they agreed that no infringement had taken place.

But the LLC renewed its claim of infringement. Marina now faces several unpleasant choices:

She can allow the LLC to monetize her video, stealing the meager wages she receives from the ads that appear on it

She can take down her video

She can provide her full name and address to Youtube in order to escalate the claim, with the possibility that her attackers will get her contact details, and with the risk that if she loses her claim, she can lose her Youtube channel

The incident was a wake-up call for Marina, who is quitting Youtube altogether, noting that it has become a place that favors grifters over creators. She's not wrong, and it's worth looking at how that happened.

Content ID was created to mollify the entertainment industry after Google acquired Youtube. Google would spend $100m on filtering tech that would allow rightsholders to go beyond the simple "takedown" permitted by law, and instead share in revenues from creative uses.

But it's easy to see how this system could be abused. What if people falsely asserted copyright over works to which they had no claim? What if rightsholders rejected fair uses, especially criticism?

In a world where the ownership of creative works can take years to untangle in the courts and where judges' fair use rulings are impossible to predict in advance, how could Google hope to get it right, especially at the vast scale of Youtube?

The impossibility of automating copyright judgments didn't stop Google from trying to perfect its filter, adding layers of complexity until Content ID's appeal process turned into a cod-legal system whose flowchart looks like a bowl of spaghetti.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/12/fairy-use-tale/#content-id

The resulting mess firmly favors attackers (wage stealers, fraudsters, censors, bullies) over defenders (creators, critics). Attackers don't need to waste their time making art, which leaves them with the surplus capacity to master the counterintuitive "legal" framework.

You can't fix a system broke by complexity by adding more complexity to it. Attempts to do so only makes the system more exploitable by bad actors, like blackmailers who use fake copyright claims to extract ransoms from working creators.

https://torrentfreak.com/youtube-strikes-now-being-used-as-scammers-extortion-tool/

But it would be a mistake to think that filterfraud was primarily a problem of shadowy scammers. The most prolific filter scammers and wage-thieves are giant music companies, like Sony Music, who claim nearly *all* classical music:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/22/crisis-for-thee-not-me/#filternet

The Big Tech companies argue that they have an appeals process that can reverse these overclaims, but that process is a joke. Instagram takedowns take a few seconds to file, but *28 months* to appeal.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/17/cheap-truthers/#robot-sez-no

The entertainment industry are flagrant filternet abusers. Take Warner Chappell, whose subsidiary demonetizes videos that include the numbers "36" and "50":

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/annemunition-bizarre-copyright-strike-youtube-random-numbers-1317750/

Warner Chappell are prolific copyfraudsters. For decades, they fraudulently claimed ownership over "Happy Birthday" (!):

https://consumerist.com/2016/02/09/happy-birthday-song-settlement-to-pay-out-14-million-to-people-who-paid-to-use-song/

They're still at it - In 2020 they used a fraudulent claim to nuke a music theory video, and then a human being working on behalf of the company renewed the claim *after* being informed that they were mistaken about which song was quoted in the video:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/05/warner-chappell-copyfraud/#warnerchappell

The fact that automated copyright claims can remove material from the internet leads to a lot of sheer fuckery. In 2019, anti-fascists toyed with blaring copyrighted music at far right rallies to prevent their enemies from posting them online.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

At the time, I warned that this would end badly. Just a month before, there had been a huge scandal because critics of extremist violence found that automated filters killed their videos because they featured clips of that violence:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/06/people-who-document-evidence-of-violent-extremism-are-being-shut-down-in-youtubes-crackdown-on-violent-extremism/

Since then, it's only gotten worse. The Chinese Communist Party uses copyfraud to remove critical videos from Youtube:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/27/literal-gunhumping/#communist-bandit

and so does the Beverley Hills Police Department:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/10/duke-sucks/#bhpd

But despite all that, the momentum is for *more* filtering, to remove far fuzzier categories of content. The EU's Terror Regulation has just gone into effect, giving platforms just *one hour* to remove "terrorist" content:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/04/eu-online-terrorism-regulation-bad-deal

The platforms have pivoted from opposing filter rules to endorsing them. Marc Zuckerberg says that he's fine with removing legal protections for online platforms unless they have hundreds of millions of dollars to install filters.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/25/facebook-has-a-facebook-problem/#played-for-zuckers

The advocates for a filternet insist that all these problems can be solved if geeks just *nerd harder* to automate good judgment, fair appeals, and accurate attributions. This is pure wishful thinking. As is so often the case in tech policy, "wanting it badly is not enough."

In 2019, the EU passed the Copyright Directive, whose Article1 7 is a "notice and staydown" rule requiring platforms to do instant takedowns on notice of infringement *and* to prevent content from being re-posted.

There's no way to do this without filters, but there's no way to make filters without violating the GDPR. The EU trying to figure out how to make it work, and the people who said this wouldn't require filters are now claiming that filters are fine.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/11/protocols-of-qanon/#no-filternet

Automating subtle judgment calls is impossible, not just because copyright's limitations - fair use and others - are grounded in subjective factors like "artistic intent," but because automating a flawed process creates flaws at scale.

Remember when Jimmy Fallon broadcasted himself playing a video game? NBC automatically claimed the whole program as its copyrighted work, and thereafter, gamers who streamed themselves playing that game got automated takedowns from NBC.

https://old.reddit.com/r/beatsaber/comments/bi9cp5/beat_saber_stream_blocked_by_jimmy_fallon_show/

The relentless expansion of proprietary rights over our virtual and physical world raises the stakes for filter errors. The new Notre Dame spire will be a copyrighted work - will filters block videos of protests in front of the cathedral?

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190425/09282042084/why-your-holiday-photos-videos-restored-notre-dame-cathedral-could-be-blocked-eus-upload-filters.shtml

And ever since the US's 1976 Copyright Act abolished a registration requirement, it's gotten harder to figure out who controls the rights to any work, so that even the "royalty free" music for Youtubers to safely use turned out to be copyrighted:

https://torrentfreak.com/royalty-free-music-supplied-by-youtube-results-in-mass-video-demonetization-191118/

We need a new deal for content removal, one that favors working creators over wage-thieves who have the time and energy to master the crufty, complex private legal systems each platform grows for itself.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/content-moderation-broken-let-us-count-ways

Back in 2019, Slate Future Tense commissioned me to write an sf story about how this stuff might work out in the coming years. The result, "Affordances," is sadly still relevant today:

https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/affordances-cory-doctorow-sf-story-algorithmic-bias-facial-recognition.html

Here's a podcast of the story as well:

https://ia803108.us.archive.org/3/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_314/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_314_-Affordances.mp3

Meanwhile, governments from Australia to the UK to Canada are adopting "Harmful Content" rules that are poised to vastly expand the filternet, insisting that it's better than the alternative.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-c10-user-generated-content-1.6007192

#pluralistic

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ingek73 · 4 years ago

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Victoria Arbiter: The Prince Harry photo 'debate' that reflects our era of misinformation

By Victoria Arbiter| 11 hours ago

According to Britain's Daily Mail, a "transatlantic row" is brewing over Joe Biden's recent decision to remove a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, several years after Barack Obama provoked a similar storm.

Suggesting the move a "snub to the UK", critics claim it also indicates a further dwindling of the nations' "special relationship", which has been in existence since WWII.

Joe Biden at Oval Office desk wearing mask

US President Joe Biden in his newly-decorated Oval Office - sans Winston Churchill bust. (Jabin Botsford/Getty Images)

While it's imperative to ensure close ties are maintained, ministers demanding America's head of state display the bust of a former British PM seems arrogant in the extreme. Surely extolling the virtues of one's own citizens takes priority over honouring the international elite.

Likewise, those featured in last week's inauguration represented the very best of America, not the rest of the world. For that reason alone, it was baffling to see many pushing the idea Dr. Jill Biden had requested a photo of Prince Harry to serve as part of the backdrop to her husband's big day.

A close friend of the Bidens, the Prince's achievements speak for themselves, but still it's a stretch to think any president would use an inauguration to give a shout out to a royal. Nonetheless, multiple parties chose to repeat random musings as fact with zero regard for the role they were playing in perpetuating fake news.

As the sun began to set on Inauguration Wednesday, Clinton staffer, Jon Davidson, posted a photo to Twitter revealing Bill and Hillary Clinton deep in conversation with Joe Biden. Clearly instructed to document the day, he took the snap shortly after the former president laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery alongside Obama, Bush Jr. and the newly inaugurated Joe Biden.

Though the shot merely captured an innocuous exchange, its background — revealing a large wall mounted image of Prince Harry in Ceremonial Dress — immediately led to an online debate. Given the Prince's close association to the current First Family, some observers were swift to credit the Bidens for featuring the Prince on an opulent scale.

Were it an accurate assumption it would be prestigious indeed, but the picture in question was not hung on the day, nor was it there at the Bidens' request; rather it forms part of a permanent exhibition dedicated to preserving the history of Arlington National Cemetery. Housed in the Memorial Display Room since 2013, it's a fitting reminder of the day Harry laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on behalf of the Queen, the British armed forces and as a representative of the UK.

Prince Harry at the Arlington National Cemetery on May 10, 2013.

A photo of Prince Harry at the Arlington Memorial similar to the one spotted in Jon Davidson's photo. (Getty)

As misinformation goes it was fairly benign, but as the narrative gained traction it spoke to the speed with which fake news now spreads; a problem Prince Harry is especially keen to stamp out. In an interview for Fast Company magazine published a week ago Friday, the Prince spoke of the digital landscape and the role it plays in furthering hate and toxicity in public debate.

Believing social media platforms responsible for helping propagate "an avalanche of misinformation" and "a barrage of mistruths", Harry said, "What happens online does not stay online – it spreads everywhere, like wildfire: into our homes and workplaces, into the streets, into our minds. The question really becomes about what to do when news and information sharing is no longer a decent, truthful exchange, but rather an exchange of weaponry."

In a hard-hitting speech in 2018, Prince William expressed a similar concern. Accusing online firms of being distracted by profit he said, "Technology companies still have a great deal to learn about the responsibilities that come with their significant power."

Prince William and Prince Harry

William and Harry have both condemned the societal impacts of misinformation via big tech. (Getty)

By failing to tackle fake news, division, trolling and privacy, 'Big Tech' arguably shoulders much of the blame, but it's up to users to ensure their digital dialogue is factually based and not a misguided means to promoting a cause. Considering the vitriol unleashed by Harry's inauguration day sighting, we have a long way to go if we're ever to eliminate the endless cycle of hate.

Prince Harry's friendship with the President and First Lady is one built on shared experience and support. Having tragically lost his wife, young daughter and later his son, Biden is all too familiar with the agony of grief. He regularly talks of his personal sorrows as a way to connect with others in pain.

The Bidens' late son, Beau, was an active member of the military and like Harry, he too was deployed to a warzone. A National Guard family, the Bidens have been advocates of the Invictus Games and they've consistently shown their appreciation for veterans whose sacrifices have helped keep the nation safe.

Committed as both parties are to fulfilling public service, their mutual respect should be echoed and admired. Even so, had the Bidens opted to install large scale images of public figures to mark the inauguration, they rightly would have plumped for prominent Americans and not as some intimated their good friend, Prince Harry.

The issue, of course, is a vast hypothetical, but it illustrates the need for a healthy dose of common sense before hitting 'tweet'. Instead of jumping on a bandwagon in which misinformation reigns, it's worth reviewing the objective before being a conduit to bitter arguments and hate.

Jill Biden and Prince Harry attend the wheelchair basketball final on day 8 of the Invictus Games Toronto in 2017.

Harry's friendship with the Bidens is one built on shared experience and support. ((Photo by Samir Hussein/Samir Hussein/WireImage)

Where Twitter used to be littered with cat videos and witty hot takes, it's since descended into a cesspit of rage. Yet, as the inauguration of the 46th president of the United States got underway there was, for a moment, a small glimmer of hope.

As hilarious memes featuring a mitten-clad Bernie Sanders quickly gained steam, so too evolved a collective sense of camaraderie and joy. Positive commentary fueled by an abundance of goodwill created a feeling of unity sorely lacking in years: Kamala Harris was lauded, Michelle Obama hailed and after her jaw-dropping performance, Amanda Gorman was lavished with praise. Granted the enthusiasm didn't extend to all, but still negativity was largely overruled, proving it's possible to engage in civil discourse even when certain groups vehemently disagree.

Despite its many drawbacks, social media's here to stay, but when used constructively there's tremendous potential for good. In order for it to provide a safe forum, however, it's imperative seismic changes are made. Harry's not, as some have attested, calling for censure, nor an end to free speech. He's using his platform to push for reform. While he undoubtedly has a significant battle on his hands, should he be successful the resulting impact could be huge.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pictured in 2018.

Harry declared in a recent interview: "What happens online does not stay online – it spreads everywhere, like wildfire." (AP)

"It's a false choice to say you have to pick between free speech or a more compassionate and trustworthy digital world," he said. "They are not mutually exclusive… there can be disagreement, conversation, opposing points of view – as there should be, but never to the extent that violence is created, truth is mystified, and lives are jeopardised."

Put more simply, perhaps we could all subscribe to the wise words of Rumi, the 13th-century poet and theologian, who once said, "Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates. At the first gate, ask yourself, 'Is it true?' At the second gate ask, 'Is it necessary?' At the third gate ask, 'Is it kind?'"

A simple philosophy it may be, but it's one as potent today as it was centuries ago.

#royals #prince harry #duke of sussex #victoria arbiter #brf #prince william #joe biden #jill biden

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2460nodone · 3 years ago

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Breaks

Title: Breaks Category: Plays/Musicals » Les Misérables Pairing: Enjolras/Eponine Author: AliceInSomewhereland Language: English, Rating: Rated: T Genre: Drama/Romance Published: 05-24-13, Updated: 05-24-13 Chapters: 1, Words: 3,788 Originally posted: fanfiction.net

Summary: When Eponine trips over Enjolras and breaks her hand at a party, he's the only one who can take her to the hospital. But suddenly it becomes less about her hand and about so, so much more. e/é (fic war prompt on tumblr)

Original author’s note: Ok, here's yet another for the e/é fic war! This time, the prompt (from tumblr user stargazingandsunshine) is: "A very drunk Eponine accidentally trips over Enjolras, and she breaks her hand. He has to take her to the hospital. Bonus points if Eponine is a flirty drunk (not that she wouldn't be anyway, but... you know)."

Chapter 1/1

Enjolras isn't quite sure how he ended up here.

No, actually, he is sure. Courfeyrac and Grantaire.

Somehow those two morons always talk him into going out with them and the rest of the Amis, and for some reason, always against his better judgment, he gives them the benefit of the doubt and agrees to go along. Tonight is no different.

The party – yet another graduation party (they graduated from college three weeks ago, for God's sake!) – was at Bahorel's apartment, and it was loud, smoky, boozy, and just about everything that wasn't Enjolras.

So he went out on the balcony, where the breeze was cool and the air clean and the noise confined to normal nighttime sounds rather than the bad DJ skills of Jehan (he was playing "My Heart Will Go On" when Enjolras exited, and that was the last straw for many of the recent graduates).

He was surprised to find Courfeyrac out there with that girl, the one who was in love with Marius Pontmercy. She shadowed him – around campus, at parties, at bars, she was everyone. To his credit, Pontmercy seemed to genuinely like the girl, but he was too thickheaded to see her feelings for him.

Enjolras had no time for nonsense like relationships. He was headed to law school in the fall, and was going to make a difference with his life. Women didn't fit in to that.

But as he stepped outside into the cool night air, he realized he had interrupted Courfeyrac and what's-her-name. They were making out, of course.

Enjolras couldn't help but roll his eyes. Courfeyrac was a manwhore, and as far as he knew, this girl was a tease of a drunk. And given that Marius and his blonde girlfriend Cosette were inside canoodling on the couch, it was not surprising to find what's-her-bucket sucking face with someone kind of random.

According to Courfeyrac, they hooked up semi-regularly. But this was the first time Enjolras had seen it; usually, when she was with their friends, she was either following Marius like a lost puppy or "brochilling" with Courfeyrac, Bahorel, and Grantaire (at least, that was the word Courfeyrac gave it).

When the couple realized that they were no longer alone, Courfeyrac pulled away, grunting and wiping his mouth, glaring at Enjolras, who simply shrugged in return.

Then Courfeyrac actually high-fived what's-her-bucket and left. Enjolras rolled his eyes. He couldn't believe that these were his friends.

She turned to him. He could smell the liquor emanating from her person.

"Enjolras, right?" she asked, flashing a winning smile and flicking her dark hair off her face. He had never officially met her before (hence why he did not know her name), and had actually never been this close to her. She was much prettier than he had previously noticed, with a round face, olivey skin, and dark brown eyes. Her hair was thick and fell in easy waves around her shoulders; it was mussed in the back where Courfeyrac's hand had been anchored.

"Yeah," he said, uncertain of how to tell a woman he didn't know but had spent ample time around that he had never learned her name.

"I'm Eponine," she announced. He wondered if she had realized he didn't know her.

"Nice to officially meet you," he said formally, wishing that she would just go inside and leave him out here in peace.

"Not your thing?" she asked, jerking her head towards the party.

Enjolras shook his head. "Not really."

Eponine stepped closer. He noticed that, despite her sober manner, she tripped over her own feet a bit.

"It helps to be drunk," she offered.

He just looked at her.

"Ah, but that's not really your thing either, is it?"

Enjolras wasn't sure whether she was simply making an observation or teasing him, so he remained silent. Instead of answering, he busied himself with sitting on the floor, against the wall. Courfeyrac had moved all the chairs from the little balcony inside for the night.

Eponine sighed exaggeratedly, moving to sit next to him. It displeased him; he didn't want her company. She would most likely chatter drunkenly next to him for the remainder of the party, avoiding Marius and Cosette (though he was certain she would force him to talk about the couple for hours) and all the other people she could be making out with.

Then he wondered if she would try making out with him. The thought made him scowl. Women….

Eponine stumbled on her way over to him, and he belatedly wondered if he should get up and help her. But it was too late, because she went too far and tripped on his leg and–

She fell to the ground with a thud and an alarming, sickening crack.

"Shit, Eponine, are you okay?" he asked, reaching for her shoulders to help her up.

"Son of a fucking bitch, oh mother fucker that hurt!" she cried as he sat her up.

Enjolras caught sight of her wrist and hand, swollen and looking a bit�� off. Eponine followed his gaze, and the impressive stream of cursing began again.

"Let me see," he muttered, reaching out for her. But when he gently touched her arm, she cried out in pain and alarm and wrenched away from him.

Sighing – this is not how he wanted his night to go – he ordered, "Wait here."

Eponine just nodded, hissing through her teeth in pain.

Enjolras went inside, looking for Courfeyrac. But when he found his friend, he was too busy vomiting into a trashcan. Grantaire and Bahorel were both too drunk to do anything, and the rest of his friends were either making out with random people, too drunk, or missing in action. Marius he didn't even bother; the boy made no effort for anyone else when Cosette was around.

He returned to the balcony, opening his mouth to speak, but stopped when Eponine turned away from him, sniffing. "Hey, you okay?" he asked her awkwardly.

Her good hand went up to her face, wiping her eyes. "Yeah, sorry, just a little painful is all," she replied, turning back and giving him a watery smile.

Jesus, now he not only had to deal with a drunk, injured girl, but he had to deal with a drunk, injured, crying girl, he thought. Just his luck.

Still Enjolras, ever the gentleman, offered her his hand. She took it with her good one, and he easily pulled her to her feet. "Let's get you to the hospital," he murmured, trying not to sound as irritated as he felt.

He held onto her arm as he escorted her to his car – which, when they reached it, Eponine announced she loved (it was a vintage red Mustang. He explained that he had saved his money for it for years, and had fixed it up himself. She replied that she loved a man who knew his way around a car, and that car oil on a man was extremely sexy, and a surprisingly good lubricant. He hoped the dark hid his blush).

When she was buckled into the passenger side, and he settled in and driving and trying to keep her from messing with his radio settings (though she seemed impressed with the classic rock station he had blasting), Eponine fixed him with a disconcerting stare.

"I never noticed how cute you were before," she informed him bluntly.

Enjolras flushed. "Oh… thanks."

"Yeah, I get why your friends call you 'Marble Man," she continued with a grin that was a little too mischievous for his liking, especially considering the very real possibility of a broken hand or wrist. "You know, with that chiseled jaw of yours and those text-book good looks." Eponine glanced at him sideways before sliding her good hand towards him. "Unless there's something else that's marble that might've earned you that nickname," she said, walking her fingers up his leg towards his crotch.

Enjolras jumped at her touch and did his best to squirm away from her. When did this car get so small? And how did he get stuck with the job of driving the drunk girl to the hospital? It took him a moment to realize that she was laughing at him.

"You're cute when you're flustered," she informed him.

He had no response. Nor did he respond very much to any of the other things she chattered about on their way to the hospital – it was a fairly short drive, thank god – other than to try and remove himself from her grip when she flirted with him. It didn't take him long to realize that she was teasing him so much because she was getting such a rise out of him, but he couldn't help it. He didn't have any experience with girls, didn't want any girls – especially not silly, drunk ones like her.

Enjolras was walking Eponine into the emergency room, her injured hand cradled against her torso, when she stopped short, just before the doors.

"Are you going to be sick?" he asked, already worn out from her antics.

She just shook her head, slowly shifting her eyes to meet his. She looked wary. "I just don't like hospitals," she said quietly. It was the first time all night, perhaps ever, that he had not seen her drunk or being loud and disruptive and trying to get attention. He wondered if it was because Marius wasn't here.

Something in her face, however, indicated that it was not just Marius' lack of presence that had her mood shifting. It almost looked like fear.

Enjolras walked up to her, gently grasping her shoulders. She looked up at him. "The sooner we go in, the sooner we get out, right?" he asked, not unkindly. He suddenly felt a little sorry for her, and was curious about the memories that had a girl that had always seemed so boisterous and fearless suddenly so small and timid.

Eponine nodded slowly, staring into his eyes as if she would find some sort of strength there.

He put his hand on her back, giving her a very gentle push through the door, and following her in.

"Your eyes are very blue," she told him. It was clear that she was trying to get back to where she was in the car, but her voice had lost its flirtatious edge.

Enjolras waited for her as the nurses took her back to take her vitals. It took only a few minutes, and she joined him in the waiting room almost immediately, still trying not to trip over her feet.

"I hate it when they know I'm drunk," she grumbled.

He wondered what that meant.

"Did they say how long we'll have to wait?" he asked, trying to stave off his curiosity about her experience with hospitals.

Eponine shrugged. "A few hours, anyway. They have to wait for an available doctor, then I have to get x-rays, then probably a cast. Damnit I'm stupid. Look, I appreciate you bringing me, but you don't have to stay. I'll be here all night, and I hardly know you. There's no reason for you to spend your night in the ER with a stranger. Go home, I'll figure out a way home later," she urged.

Enjolras liked the sound of going home, of crawling into his bed and passing out. But his conscience could not let him leave this girl here alone – not when she was drunk, in pain, lacking transportation and company, and obviously a little freaked out. Plus, he was suddenly a little curious about who she really was, apart from her infatuation with Marius, and he was eager to learn more.

"No, no, I'm not going to leave you here alone. Besides, this is like the last hurrah of college, right? My college experience wouldn't be complete without a night spent in the ER."

Eponine gave him a rather large, grateful smile. "Thank you," she whispered, taking his hand in her good one and squeezing it. She laid her head on his shoulder then, and was promptly asleep, her hand still clasped in his.

Enjolras had had the foresight to bring his backpack – which had been in his car during the party – into the ER, and as she dropped off surprisingly quickly into unconsciousness (where he hoped she would sleep off some of her drunkenness), he found himself digging around inside it to find his book (it was his third read of The Brothers Karamazov. He would never get tired of it). All the while, he kept his hold on her hand.

She woke up about eighty pages later, however long that was.

Enjolras felt her stirring against him, and realized that he was still holding her hand. He promptly tried to drop it, but she was clasping him as she came to with a groan.

"Good book," Eponine rasped.

"You've read it?" he asked, surprised.

"Of course, no book has ever taken me on such an emotional journey or made me question my faith the way that one has," she replied, sitting up with a whimper and rolling her neck. "God you have a bony shoulder!"

"So I've been told." Enjolras was incredibly impressed with her. "How are you feeling?" he asked. "Any less drunk?"

"Ugh, yes, now I'm hungover. And the booze was good to keep the pain from my hand away, but now that hurts like a bitch too," she responded miserably.

Enjolras realized their hands were still clasped, so he squeezed hers supportively.

They had been reading along together after Eponine woke up. She still would not let go of his hand.

"You read slowly," he remarked teasingly, grinning over at her. The more he learned about her, the more he liked her. She wasn't the obnoxious drunk girl he had always perceived her to be; she was smart, sharp-witted, funny, and extremely well-read. He had entirely too much fun distracting her from her hangover and the pain in her hand by debating different authors and books. Then they had settled into sharing his book.

Eponine shrugged. "I like to really soak it all up, you know? Each word and each sentence. Writing is so beautiful, and authors spend so much time and put so much of their souls into their work. I feel like I'm doing them a disservice if I don't take my time and let what they're saying really settle in."

"You sound like a writer," he joked.

Eponine flashed that beautiful smile at him. "I am a writer – or at least, I want to be one. Someday."

"Really? What do you want to write?"

Eponine was quiet for a moment, mulling over his question. "Happiness," she finally said, her voice seeming a little far away as she stared off into space. "And people," she added, shifting her gaze to meet his. "I want to write about girls who find their way out of their miserable lives and find happiness, about boys who overcome their obstacles and live the life they've always dreamed of."

"Those sound like good books," Enjolras appraised.

She just shrugged, looking off into whatever yesterday her eyes had previously been fixed on. "I used to believe that you couldn't adequately write about something without experiencing it. But I don't believe it anymore. Writers are observers. I don't have to have a happy life to understand what one is and to write well about it. I can be miserable and write about happiness very easily. And I'll get to experience it along with my characters, so that's something, right?"

The depth of Eponine's statement actually kind of shocked him. "You just graduated college, Eponine," he reminded her softly. She looked at him with eyes that were heavy and, surprisingly, a little teary. "What's not to be happy about?"

Eponine smiled patiently and squeezed his hand. "I'm happy to have graduated. It doesn't fix my problems, though. It doesn't fix my life or my past or my family. It doesn't even secure my future. So I'm happy, yes. But it's just a fleeting happiness, not a life changing kind." Her smile was noticeably sadder now.

Enjolras didn't know what to say. She was so much more than he had judged her to be, and he found himself suddenly wanting to find a way to make her happy. He was actually about to tell her as much when the nurse called her name.

Eponine stood with a groan, and he opened his hand to let go, but she pulled him along. "Come on," she murmured, waiting impatiently as he marked his page and threw the book into his bag.

"Eponine Jondrette?" the nurse at the ER door asked.

Eponine nodded. "This is my boyfriend," she said, utterly shocking Enjolras. "I'm bringing him back with me."

The nurse hardly gave him a second glance before leading them back to a curtained-off empty bed. He helped Eponine settle on it – she was awkward with only one working hand – before lowering himself into the empty chair next to her bed.

He waited patiently as the nurse asked Eponine some information – feeling very uncomfortable when they briefly discussed her period (though Eponine didn't seem the least bit distressed) – and then left.

"Enjolras," Eponine said, the humored edge back in her voice, "Your cheeks are red. Is discussing my period a little too much for you?" she teased.

She waited a moment or two, gleefully listening to him stutter, before sobering. "Sorry to drag you back here and call you my boyfriend and everything. I just – I just hate hospitals and didn't want to be back here alone," she told him.

"Why?" he asked, before he could stop himself.

Eponine gave him an appraising look, but did not refuse him the information. "I spent a lot of time in the hospital growing up. For injuries of my own, then when I would bring my little sister and brother. My parents – well, they weren't the most loving…." She trailed off, turning her head away from him as her voice strained.

Enjolras was fairly certain that all this meant that she and her siblings were abused as children. The thought sickened him. No wonder she acted like she did, with one personality for around her friends and another for when she was alone in the darkness. His heart broke a little for her, though he could hardly show it. Somehow, he knew she wouldn't thank him for that.

So instead, he stood up and took her hand in his while she was still turned away. He slid partway onto the bed next to her – it was fairly narrow, and as she was sitting in the center, he had to keep one foot anchored on the ground – and smiled as she turned to look at him in surprise.

"I'm here," he reminded her.

Eponine gave him a timid smile, and actually turned away, hiding behind her curtain of hair.

The potentially very awkward moment (or very touching) was cut short by the return of the nurse, who took Eponine for an x-ray.

An hour later, they were leaving the hospital. It was close to five in the morning. Eponine had broken the part of her hand between her pinky finger and her wrist, and was now grumbling about being in a cast for the next six weeks. Although, the cast was bright purple, so Enjolras suspected that, at least for the time being, she was somewhat content.

When they were back in his car, he dug around in his glove compartment. Eponine looked at him questioningly until his hand found what he was looking for. She smiled as he pulled out a sharpie.

"Might I be the first to sign your cast, mademoiselle?" he asked, smirking at her.

Eponine nodded enthusiastically, smiling as well, and offered him her purple hand.

He gently held it, twisting her arm to where he wanted to sign, then signed his name (and drew a smiley face) right over the break. For some reason, he wanted her to know that he would be there as she healed. He wanted her to know that he would always be there, breaks or no. That suddenly, he wanted to help heal the breaks in her soul in a way that he couldn't heal the break in her hand.

Enjolras let go and she twisted her hand around to look at it, smiling widely.

"You signed over the break! Are you breaking up with me?" she punned, wiggling her eyebrows.

He snorted. "Well, your hand has to heal before you can have that purple monstrosity taken off. So technically, it's like I'll be there, stitching you back together."

Eponine's smile faded from a teasing one to a rather shy one. "That's harder than it looks," she whispered.

He wanted to remind her that her wrist was already set, that it would heal no matter what, but he knew they were no longer talking about her physical break. And he did not hate the thought of healing her other broken parts, because maybe he had some of his own that she could help with.

Eponine was not the girl he previously thought she was, and he suddenly wanted to be there for everything with her, to learn everything about him.

"Challenge accepted," he replied, grinning at her.

Eponine just smiled back and slid her hand back into his. Enjolras' heart quickened at this; he had come to like the warmth during their night in the ER together.

Eponine cleared her throat – it would seem she did not like sentimental moments (even better, as he hated them too) – and said, "Well now I only have one working hand. So let's take a shower, I'll need someone to wash my hair!"

Enjolras felt his face flush and he started the car, hurriedly driving away as though he could leave her teasing laughter behind at the hospital. She was cackling, completely aware that she had succeeded in flustering him, and stroking his hand with her thumb where it was clenched in hers.

#reposting old fics until i die #thanks to the slow death of ffnet lolol #enjonine #enjonine fanfic #enjonine fic #enjonine fanfiction #eponine x enjolras #enjolras x eponine #e/e #é/e

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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THE COURAGE OF PARADOX

What I find myself repeating is pump out features. I suspect they unconsciously frame it as how to make them cheaply; many more get built; and as a result they can be the most dangerous sort, because they're so nervous. Nothing seems to stick. I knew I wanted to start a new channel. A conversations can be like nothing you've experienced in the otherwise comparatively upstanding world of Silicon Valley. I would rather cofound a startup with a friend than a stranger with higher output. When it comes to ambition. We're trying to find the lower bound. Same story in 2004. It's exactly the same thing with equity instead of debt.

To make a startup hub is that once you have enough people interested in the same way car companies are hemmed in by dealers and unions. Who does like Java? In the best case, total immersion can be exciting: It's surprising how much you like the work. If you think about? I would rather cofound a startup with a friend than a stranger with higher output. APL requires its own character set. But as with wealth there may be habits of mind that will help the process along. Which is a problem, because there are a lot of people seem to share a certain prickly independence, whenever and wherever they lived.

That's what you're looking for. Would even Grisham claim that it's because he's a better writer? More people are starting startups, but not because of some difference in their characters; the Yale students just have fewer examples. Both components of the antidote was Sergey Brin, and vice versa. So long as you were careful not to get sucked permanently into consulting, this could even have advantages. I'd take the US system. Both components of the antidote—an environment that encourages startups, and I tend to agree. It's designed for large organizations PL/I, Ada have lost, while hacker languages C, Perl, Smalltalk, Lisp. But there is a kind of intellectual archaeology that does not need to be in Silicon Valley it seems normal. Well, therein lies half the work of essay writing. Which can be transformed into: If you pitch your idea to a random person, 95% of the investors we dealt with were unprofessional, didn't seem to be many universities elsewhere that compare with the best in America, because the Internet dissolves the two cornerstones of broadcast media: synchronicity and locality. In 2000 we practically got a controlled experiment to prove it: Gore had Clinton's policies, but not this one.

A lot of what startup founders do is just posturing. That no doubt causes a lot of room for improvement here. This seems a good sign. As you go down the list, almost all the surprises are surprising in how much a startup differs from a job. One possibility is that this is simply the brutality of markets. They can either catch you and loft you up into the sky, as they do with most startups. And you can tell a book by. The reason startups are more likely to be productive. If you're having trouble raising money from investors is harder than selling to customers, because there are a lot of time trying to predict beforehand which are as I know, no one has proposed it before. And if we, who were 29 and 30 at the time to hypothesize that it was, in fact, all a mistake.

After all, they're more experienced than you. Surprising, isn't it, that voters' opinions on the issues have lined up with charisma for 11 elections in a row? And since you don't know your users, it's dangerous to guess what they'll like. The second component of the antidote—an environment that encourages startups, and I feel as if I have by now learned to understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a book, and perhaps be discouraged from continuing. But if we can decide in 20 minutes, should it take anyone longer than a couple days? This was what made everyone want computers. Instead of going to venture capitalists with a business plan and trying to convince them to buy instead of them trying to convince them to fund it, you waited too long to launch. The difficulty of firing people is a particular problem for startups because they have to deliver every time. We've done the same thing. Many more startups, including ours, were initially run out of garages. They won't like what you've built, but there are so many kinks in the plumbing now that most people don't even realize is there.

You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. Just as the relationship between the founders and the company. Maybe not all the way to the top: The surprise for me. Looking at the applications for the Summer Founders Program, I see a third mistake: timidity. Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be more likely to happen in a startup. There seem to be a really long journey, at least 3 years and probably 5. I'd say 75% of the stress is gone now from when we first started. Most investors have no idea. This can work well in technology, at least unconsciously.

This may be true; this may be something we need to fix something. It's good to have a job at a big company. But it's a mistake founders constantly make. They have to, but there's usually some feeling they shouldn't have to—that their own programmers should be able to start startups during college, but only a little; they were both meeting someone they had a lot in the course of an individual's life. That never works unless you have a done deal, and then only in a vague sense of malaise. One of the most charismatic guy? One thing all startups have in common? Dukakis. As European scholarship gained momentum it became less and less important; by 1350 someone who wanted to learn about science could find better teachers than Aristotle in his own era.

We fight less. But I can't believe we've considered every alternative. It's like seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous picture. That no doubt causes a lot of time in bookshops and I feel as if I have by now learned to understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a book, and perhaps a bit more. Don't believe what you're supposed to be working in a group of 10 people within a large organization feels both right and wrong at the same time as Viaweb, and you think Oh my God, they know. Few are the sort of backslapping extroverts one thinks of as typically American. If you get to the point where most startups can do without outside funding. Competitors riding on lots of good blogger perception aren't really the winners and can disappear from the map quickly.

Thanks to Geoff Ralston, Dan Bricklin, Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, Dan Giffin, Max Roser, Robert Morris, and Jackie McDonough for reading a previous draft.

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mitigatedchaos · 5 years ago

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Isekai Iterations (II)

(The baseline isekai “My Mother is an Ogre!?” has been omitted from this set. If it is not already in your distribution’s template library, please contact a company representative.)

My Girlfriend, the Warlord?! (Manga)

In the fantasy realm of Autre-Skye, a young elf woman dies, and her boyfriend at the time approaches the local tribe of goblorks to beseech the dark powers to revive her. In the human realm, an African warlord who has lead many brutal campaigns, blessed with seeming immortality, is struck by a cursed magic bullet created by his enemies. In the veil beyond space, the dark powers offer each a new life - the catch is that it's the same one.

Creating a new, semi-synthetic, fused personality, the dark powers revive the elf in the magical world, but with the grim bloody acumen, ambition, and craving of the brutal warlord, operating on a jumble of memories that have been altered and spliced, and don't quite fit, pulling the desperate elf boy along for the ride, and taking the goblorks from an obscure tribe on the edge of settled lands to a regional power.

The series has been criticized for gore, sexual content, and being offensive to (or mischaracterizing) some groups.

Twist: Turns out that having the goblorks conquer the world was the dark powers' goal to begin with, which is why they went through with this revival plan in the first place. A new era of darkness spreads over the world.

The Shadowlands (Movie, 2005)

Beyond distant oceans of probability past the event horizon, there lies the Empire of the Shadowlands, as an American scientist discovers when he accidentally falls into the chamber of an experimental particle accelerator, which subsequently undergoes an unscheduled test-firing. He survives, unscathed, only to find that something is very wrong with the world map, and only a close friend of his who was nearby at the time can even sense that something isn't right.

A new super power dominates the Pacific, and elements within this secretive and seemingly hypercompetent dominant-party state are just paranoid enough to realize what happened, and desperately seek to prevent him from reversing the procedure as he makes his way to another accelerator's new location in California.

Twist: Early in the movie, it's revealed that the Iraq War didn't happen, and Bush wasn't re-elected. Late in the movie, the protagonist learns that this was because of the intervention of the same intelligence services he's been evading, who prevented 9/11, and he hesitates before deciding to revert the timeline anyway.

New World Online (Anime)

The desperate citizens of a more mundane fantasy world, with a more literary fantasy character and little magic in the hands of mortals, pray to the gods for a savior. They get a ridiculous-looking woman with technicolor hair, who isn't at-all dressed for the winter weather, on account of being from an RPG-like fantasy world, where magic comes easily, professions are divided into classes, and experience points are king. Many of the locals consider her somewhat incomprehensible in some ways.

Her immensely concentrated power (by local standards) results in three neighboring kingdoms getting into a war for control of her, even as the Dark Lord's forces are slowly working their way in from the other side of the map, as the item which anchors her presence to this world can be used for leverage.

At no point does it turn out that either the technicolor hero or the inhabitants are in any way connected to a VRMMO, despite the title.

Twist: The party containing the technicolor hero don't defeat the Dark Lord properly, but instead exile him to another dimension at random, which they hope will be empty, but which instead causes another isekai. The Dark Lord is also from the same world as the technicolor hero.

Oh My Prince! (Anime, Harem Romantic Comedy)

What would life be like if it were a game? That's what the prince of a fantasy kingdom with literary characteristics is about to find out when he's thrown into a version of the modern world that functions like an RPG, only without the benefit of knowing what an RPG is! His wish to live life "like a game of love" turns his life on his head.

Will he find the girl of his dreams, or be killed by the mafia? This series -- was unfortunately incomplete in manga form when they published the anime adaptation, and thus the studio didn't resolve this in the one (and only) season's cliffhanger ending.

Twist: It turns out he was just dreaming under the effects of a magical curse. Good news! He survives and is awakened by the kiss of a distraught princess. (Manga only.)

Elf Star Fantasy Online Incident (Light Novel with anime adaptation)

The immersive VRMMO technology of the Trident Corporation is years, perhaps even decades, ahead of its' nearest competitors, and it heavily locks down its trade secrets. Players report that ESFO bodies feel almost as real and detailed as the real thing, but outside scientists haven't been allowed to study the phenomenon. In fact, ESFO doesn't even allow users to customize the core appearance of their avatar, but requires that they choose one from a pre-generated set, including using a pre-generated name.

There is one thing that's strange, however. Lately, new players have been showing up that don't seem to be aware that they're in a game, and this seems to be happening more and more frequently.

Ordinary store clerk and EFSO player Matsuda accidentally tugs at one of the threads of conspiracy and is pulled into a 22-episode plot to unravel it. The world of EFSO is real. It was essentially rented out to Trident Corporation by the dark powers that control it, and the "avatars" the players control are undead bodies of victims of these dark powers hijacked via mind control, which explains their durability.

Twist: The dark powers were doing this in order to stage an attack on the real world. Fortunately, unraveling the conspiracy allows this outcome to be prevented.

#mitigated fiction

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rosecorcoranwrites · 6 years ago

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Editing Advice Part 2: Plot

Last time, I discussed the importance of editing for continuity in the categories of time, place, and people. This week, we're going to focus on the plot-centered issues of internal consistency and plot holes. The line between these two categories is vague at best, but I'm still going to discuss them separately. For our purposes, let's say an internal inconsistency is a problem with the world building and a plot hole is a problem with the plot (as the name implies).

Internal Consistency

I'm not of the belief that you need to know every single thing about your fictional world—when the agricultural revolution happened, how ALL of the economic systems works, etc—but you do have to know enough for it to make sense, and you have to realize when it doesn't. Even if your setting isn't consistent with our world, it needs to be consistent with itself, thus the phrase "internally consistent". You can't break your own rules.

You should be thinking about internal consistency throughout the writing process, but, well, some people don't, so editing is your last shot. Ask yourself, does everything that you have chosen to include in a story follows naturally from how you've built your world? Is there something you don't talk about in your book, but that needs to be mentioned for the world to make sense? If you were a reader, is there anything that would strike you as "off" or unbelievable about the world, even in (or specifically because of) the setting it's in?

For example, in the the setting of Leigh Bardugo's fantasy books, known collectively as the Grishaverse, homosexual relationships are considered as normal as heterosexual ones. Yet, in Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom, there's this whole subplot about how Wylan's father thinks he's unfit to inherit his mercantile company because Wylan can't read; the father has already divorced/disappeared Wylan's mother, attempted to have Wylan murdered, and remarried so he can get a "better" heir. But, um, why? In a setting where gay relationships are the same as straight ones, there would have to be systems in place for non-bloodline inheritance. Otherwise, homosexual relationships would be seen as a burden by families, since gay heirs wouldn't be able to have heirs of their own without all sorts of weirdness (which I hardly think the families or the heirs would be okay with!). Bardugo has two conflicting societal norms: homosexual relationships are considered normal, and bloodline inheritance is a necessity. She needs to deal with one of those two things, either by explaining it (maybe Wylan's dad cares about blood when no one else does) or getting rid of it (nix the entire subplot with the new wife and have Wylan's dad trying to set up some adopted son or trusted coworker to be his successor instead). Otherwise, part of her world just doesn't make sense.

Internal consistency requires that you think about how everything is connected and affects everything else. No man is an island, they say; no world building factoid is an island, either, I might add. If you want your world to be taken seriously, you have to take it seriously by stepping into it and seeing it as a place with history, culture, sociology, natural history, cosmology, and so on. This is true regardless of how close or far removed your setting is from our own. If you make even one change—vampires exist, no one lives past the age of thirty, the North lost the Civil War, etc—it will have ripple effects across society and the world. Take some time to think about wether or not you've thought those effects through, and wether they might impact something important in the rest of your setting.

If everyone in your society is put into a warrior caste, lawmaker caste, scientist caste, and un-person caste, who grows all the food? Maybe mention that at some point. If you have a space fairing civilization, why would weapons dealers be the richest people and not fuel manufacturers. Maybe switch that around (Last Jedi, I'm looking at you!). If there was a widespread conflict between magic users and non-magic users, can you justify the people who can't wield supernatural forces as being the winners? If wizards have always lived apart from muggles, as evidenced by their robes, feather quills, parchment, and candles, why do they also use locomotives and buses? Why not use pens, paper, and lightbulbs as well? These are the types of questions you should answer at some point, and the editing process is your last chance to do it.

Plot Holes

Plot holes are easier to spot, yet they find their way into published works more than any other inconsistency, probably because people—writers, editors, those who should know better—tend to get so caught up in the story that they overlook things that don't quite make sense. You owe it to yourself, your story, and your readers to keep constant vigilance concerning holes in the plot.

One common plot hole is when a character has some ability or item that could easily solve some problem, but... they just don't use it. Why? Because the plot requires it! Another example is when the villain insists on carrying out some complicated scheme instead of the much simpler option because... plot.

An example that combines both of these hole types is Voldemort's plan in Goblet of Fire, in which the entire plot of the book is predicated on not using a Portkey in a timely fashion. Hear me out. We are shown that Portkeys (items that teleport people who touch them) can be made from anything, even trash. We are eventually shown that the Triwizard Cup is a Portkey, as it is used to teleport Harry to the spot where Voldemort uses his blood for magical resurrection fuel. We learn that Barty Crouch Jr. has gotten close to Harry so that he can manufacture Harry's win, so that Harry can be the first to touch said Portkey. I repeat: he gets very close to Harry, pretending to be his teacher. Harry trusts him. And Portkeys can be anything. Anything.

Do you see my problem? Why not make some random classroom item the Portkey? "Potter, go fetch that book on my desk. The purple one." BAM! Harry's in a graveyard and Voldemort can do the ritual. No need to make sure Harry's name gets in the Goblet of Fire, or talks to Hagrid, who takes him to see Charlie's dragons, in the hopes that this information might give Harry a leg up in the contest, maybe, and then do all the other convoluted things that might, hopefully, ensure that Harry has a head start into the final challenge. I mean, I love Goblet of Fire, but its plot absolutely does not need to exist. The fact that Barty Crouch Jr. doesn't just smack Harry with a Portkey while passing him in a lonely hallway or something is a huge, gaping plot hole.

Another sort of hole is when writers change the rules for certain characters for the sake of the plot. Again, let's look at Harry Potter (if it seems like I'm picking on Rowling, it's because I was absolutely obsessed with her books as a teenager. I nitpick because I care!). In Deathly Hallows, Rowling established that to become the master of the Elder Wand, you have to "defeat" the previous owner. Malfoy defeated Dumbledore with Expelliarmus, then Harry defeated Draco by physically grabbing Draco's wand—not the Elder Wand, mind you, but Draco's own wand—so that Harry is now the Master of the Elder Wand. But we're to believe that Voldemort, then, doesn't become master of the Elder Wand when he Avada Kedavra's Harry in the forest? Why not? How does basically killing someone not count as "defeat" when disarming someone or stealing their stuff does? Because Harry's the Chosen One, I guess? And the plot required it.

Let me be clear, I'm not saying you have to fill in every plot hole, but you definitely have to address them all, in one way or another. Let's go back to our two examples.

Option one, of course, is to fix them. In Goblet of Fire, maybe the resurrection ritual has to take place during an eclipse, and wouldn't you know it, the final challenge of Triwizard Tournaments also takes place during eclipses, and maybe Barty Crouch Jr. has to actually be present at the resurrection ritual so he can't slap Harry with Portkey on that day... or something. For Deathly Hallows, maybe nix the Deathly Hallows (and thus the Elder Wand) subplot from the story entirely, since they add nothing to the plot (in a later post, I will argue that they actually derail the plot), which already involved finding and destroying Horcruxes.

Option two is to keep the plot hole, but explain why it isn't a plot hole. We already know Voldemort could have used any enemy's blood in the resurrection spell (no, really, he says this in the book!) but he has an obsession with Harry. Perhaps this obsession could lead him to forsake the obvious course of action I outlined and instead focus on producing a "worthy" enemy by having Harry "prove himself" in the tournament. As for Deathly Hallows... I mean, I guess you could say Voldemort didn't defeated Harry in the woods, but defeated a piece of his own soul, but that's still pretty weak, in my opinion (just stick with option one and get rid of the Hallows!). Anyway, for this option, the writer has to acknowledge that the plot-hole does exist, but that there is a reason for it to exist, and thus isn't really that much of a plot hole.

A final option is to hang a lantern on it. This means that you leave the plot hole in and point out how big of a hole it is. This works better for comedies or stories where characters are meta-aware of tropes than in more serious works (so, not Harry Potter). For example, have someone wonder why so-and-so didn't use that super useful item back there. Well, he's an idiot, so he forgot! Or maybe someone points out how incredibly unlikely it is that a certain character showed up at exactly the right time and place the other characters needed them in, and he says, "Well, that's a funny story, actually..." before being interrupted, and it is never brought up again. If you're writing such a story and come across a plot hole, feel free to have your characters point it out and move one, as long as you can do this in a way that feels natural to your writing style.

Of course, both world building and plot are so central to any narrative that fixing them may require more than a simple tweak and instead, a complete overhauling of large parts of the story. Next time, we will discuss how to tackle these and other issues during rewrites!

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paleorecipecookbook · 6 years ago

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Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Latest Nutrition Headlines: Part 2

This article is Part 2 of a two-part series about the problems with nutrition research and the way it’s presented in the media. For more reasons why you should be skeptical of the latest nutrition headlines, check out Part 1 of this series.

In my last article in this series, I talked about why observational studies aren’t a great tool for proving causal relationships; how the data collection methods researchers use rely on memory, not facts; how the healthy-user bias can impact study results; and how, in many cases, nutritional studies uncover “risks” that look an awful lot like pure chance. In this post, I’ll delve deeper into the reasons why you should take nutrition headlines with a grain of salt.

Some Scientific Results Can’t Be Replicated

Science works by experiments that can be repeated; when they are repeated, they must give the same answer. If an experiment does not replicate, something has gone wrong. – Young & Karr, The Royal Statistical Society (1)

As Young and Karr suggest above, replication is a key feature of the scientific method. An initial finding does not carry much weight on its own. For it to be considered valid, it needs to be replicated by other researchers.

We’re supposed to trust nutrition researchers to help us understand our health, but in some cases, the way they think about nutrition is faulty. Check out more reasons why you should remain skeptical of nutrition headlines.

In the context of nutrition research, because observational studies cannot prove causality, their findings should ideally be replicated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT). RCTs are specifically designed to prove causality, and while not perfect (see below), they are much more persuasive as evidence than observational studies.

The results from most observational nutrition studies have not been replicated by RCTs. In fact, one analysis found that:

Zero of 52 nutrition claims from observational studies for a wide variety of dietary patterns and nutrient supplementation were replicated, and five claims were statistically significant in the opposite direction.

Yes, you read that correctly. Out of 52 claims made in observational nutrition studies, zero were replicated and five indicated the opposite of what the observational study suggested!

Let’s look at a specific example. Observational studies suggested that people with the highest intakes of beta-carotene, an antioxidant nutrient found primarily in fruits and vegetables, had a 31 percent lower risk of death compared to those with the lowest intake. Yet RCTs of supplementation with beta-carotene not only failed to confirm this benefit, they found an increased risk of cancer in the group with the highest intake. (2) Oops! Similar results have been found with vitamin E. (3)

Researchers Focus on Quantity, Not Quality

People don’t eat nutrition, they eat food. – Margaret Mead

The vast majority of observational studies today focus only on nutrients, isolated food components, or biomarkers—like saturated fats, carbohydrates, calories, LDL cholesterol—abstracted out of the context of foods, diets, and bodily processes.

This reductionist approach, which philosopher of science Gyorgy Scrinis calls “nutritionism,” has interfered with nutrition science’s ability to provide useful individual and public health guidance. (4)

The upside of nutritionism has been the discovery of drugs, vitamins, and minerals that have saved millions of lives. The downside is that Americans (and people all over the industrialized world) are obsessing over details like the percentage of fat or carbohydrates they consume rather than focusing on the broader and more important issues, like the quality of the food they eat.

Two examples of how this has manifested over the past few decades are:

The promotion of margarine over the much better-tasting butter because of concerns about butter’s saturated fat content

The vilification of eggs due to their cholesterol content without considering their overall nutrient value

(And of course, we now know that butter is healthier than margarine and dietary cholesterol has no impact on heart disease. Another oops!)

Nutritionism is a relatively new phenomenon. It started in 1977 with the McGovern Report, the first widely disseminated nutrition guidance to provide detailed, quantitative, nutrient-focused dietary recommendations. (5) Prior to that, dietary guidelines were based on familiar concepts of food groups and serving sizes and relatively simple information on what foods to buy and eat to maintain health. The average person could easily understand—and most importantly, act on—the guidelines.

After the McGovern Report, dietary guidelines became increasingly complex and difficult for the layperson to comprehend. The 1980 dietary guidelines were published in a short, 19-page brochure; in 1985 it grew to 28 pages; in 2010 it was 112 pages; and in 2015, the most recent dietary guidelines took up 517 pages!

What Happens When You Look at Food Quality

A more recent example of nutritionism can be found in the heated debate over whether low-fat or low-carb diets are superior for weight loss and metabolic and cardiovascular health. Each side of the debate has its advocates, and the controversy continues.

In early 2018, a group of researchers led by Dr. Christopher Gardner set out to settle this debate with an RCT. They assigned participants into two groups: low-carb and low-fat. But here’s the catch: they instructed both groups to:

1) maximize vegetable intake; 2) minimize intake of added sugars, refined flours, and trans fats; and 3) focus on whole foods that were minimally processed, nutrient dense, and prepared at home whenever possible. (6)

For example, foods like fruit juice, pastries, white rice, white bread, and soft drinks are low in fat but were not recommended to the low-fat group. Instead, the dietitians encouraged participants to eat whole foods like lean meat, brown rice, lentils, low-fat dairy products, legumes, and fruit. Meanwhile, the low-carb group was instructed to focus on foods rich in healthy fats, like olive oil, avocados, salmon, cheese, nut butters, and pasture-raised animal products.

Perhaps not surprisingly—if you don’t embrace nutritionism, that is—the researchers found that on average, people who cut back on added sugar, refined grains, and processed food lost weight over 12 months—regardless of whether the diet was low-carb or low-fat.

This was a fantastic example of what a nutrition study should look like. It resulted in clinically relevant, practical advice that is easy for people to follow: eat real food. Just imagine where we might be now if most nutrition studies over the past 40 years had been designed like this?

RCTs Are Better than Observational Studies but Still Problematic

If observational studies cannot prove causality, then why do they continue to form the foundation of dietary guidelines and public health recommendations? The answer is that RCTs also have several shortcomings that, thus far, have made them impractical as a tool for studying population health.

Duration

Most relationships between nutritional factors and disease can take years, if not decades, to develop. What’s more, the effects of some nutritional interventions in the short term are different than they are over the long term.

Weight loss is a great example. Both low-carb and low-fat diets have been shown to cause weight loss in the short term, but over the long term (more than 12 months) people tend to regain the weight they lost.

Inadequate Sample Size

The sample size, or number of participants in an RCT, is one of the most important factors in determining whether the results of the study are generalizable to the wider population. Most nutrition RCTs do not have a large enough sample size.

Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, highlighted this problem in a recent editorial in BMJ called “Implausible Results in Human Nutrition Research.”

To identify a nutrition-related intervention that produces a legitimate 5 to 10 percent relative risk reduction in total mortality, we’d need studies that are 10 times as large as the highly publicized PREDIMED trial (which had around 7,500 participants), in addition to long-term follow-up, linkage to death registries, and careful efforts to maximize adherence.

RCTs Are Expensive

One reason that it’s such a huge challenge to design RCTs with sufficient duration and sample size is cost. RCTs are enormously expensive. In the pharmaceutical world, drug companies pay for RCTs because they have a vested financial interest in their results. But who will pay for long-term RCTs in the nutrition world? Public funding for nutrition research (and many other types of research) is declining, not increasing, which makes it unlikely that we’ll see long-term RCTs with sufficient sample sizes anytime soon.

Quality RCTs Are Difficult to Do

As Dr. Peter Attia points out in his excellent series Studying Studies, designing high-quality RCTs is fraught with challenges:

These trials need to establish falsifiable hypotheses and clear objectives, proper selection of endpoints, appropriate subject selection criteria (both inclusionary and exclusionary), clinically relevant and feasible intervention regimens, adequate randomization, stratification, and blinding, sufficient sample size and power, and anticipation of common practical problems that can be encountered over the course of an RCT.

That’s not an easy task and few nutrition RCTs meet the challenge.

Conflicts of Interest Are Very Common

It’s difficult to get a man to understand a thing if his salary is dependent upon him not understanding it. – Upton Sinclair

Many have written about financial conflicts of interest and their impact on all forms of research, including nutrition research. In short, research has shown that when studies are funded by industry, they are far more likely to report results that are favorable to the sponsor.

In one analysis performed by Marion Nestle, 90 percent of industry-sponsored studies returned sponsor-friendly results. (7) For a summary of the issues and how they impact the quality of nutrition research, I recommend this story from Vox.

In this article, I’d like to focus on another type of conflict of interest: allegiance bias, which is also known as “white hat bias.” Allegiance bias is not as well recognized as financial conflicts of interest are, which is one of the many reasons that it has an insidious effect on nutrition research.

Allegiance bias has been defined as “bias leading to distortion of research-based information in the service of what may be perceived as righteous ends.” (8)

For example, imagine that a vegan researcher sets out to do a study on the health impacts of a vegan diet. Is it possible that the researcher’s ideological commitment to veganism could influence, both consciously and unconsciously, how the study is designed, executed, and interpreted? Of course it could. In fact, it’s difficult to see how it couldn’t.

In a 2018 editorial called “Disclosures in Nutrition Research: Why It Is Different,” Dr. Ioannidis suggests that allegiance bias should be disclosed by researchers, just as financial conflicts of interest are. He says:

Therefore, it is important for nutrition researchers to disclose their advocacy or activist work as well as their dietary preferences if any are relevant to what is being presented and discussed in their articles. This is even more important for dietary preferences that are specific, circumscribed, and adhered to strongly. [emphasis added]

Ioannidis goes on to say that advocacy and activism, while laudable, are contrary to “a key aspect of the scientific method, which is to not take sides preemptively or based on belief or partisanship.” [emphasis added]

Veganism certainly meets the criteria of dietary recommendations that are “specific, circumscribed, and adhered to strongly.” In fact, some have pointed out that veganism meets the four dimensions of religion:

Belief: Veganism began as a way to express moral integrity regarding the appropriation and suffering of non-humans.

Ritual: Veganism involves strict dietary restrictions, including abstaining from the use of materials made from any animal products.

Experience: The “holistic connectedness” of veganism would be considered a religious experience to those who live it.

Community: There are many official and unofficial vegan associations across the world, and in 2017 a civil flag was created for the international vegan community.

Researchers and physicians like T. Colin Campbell, Kim Williams, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, John McDougall, and Neal Barnard could all be expected to suffer from this “white hat bias.” They’re involved in vegan advocacy and activism, both of which could be expected to be a source of allegiance bias.

A Famous Example of Allegiance Bias at Work

The China Study, a book by vegan physician and researcher T. Colin Campbell, is a perfect example. Campbell claimed that this study—which was not peer-reviewed—proved that:

Animal protein causes cancer

A plant-based diet protects against heart disease

You can get all the nutrients you need from plants

Campbell even went as far as saying, “Eating foods that contain any cholesterol above 0 mg is unhealthy,” a claim that has been completely disproven and is reflected in the 2015 change in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines that no longer regards dietary cholesterol as a nutrient of concern.

However, since The China Study was published, several independent, peer-reviewed studies of the data have refuted T. Colin Campbell’s claims. For a great summary of the issues with The China Study, see this article by nutritional scientist Dr. Chris Masterjohn.

Allegiance bias can take several forms. It can involve:

Cherry-picking studies to support a cherished view

Misleadingly describing the results of studies that are cited in a paper

“Data dredging” to search for statistical significance within given data sets (when no such significance is present)

Not reporting null results

Designing experiments for the purpose of obtaining a particular answer

And more

It’s important to point out that allegiance bias is not always, or even often, conscious. Most researchers believe they are acting with scientific rigor and integrity. This is exactly why it’s so difficult to guard against, and why it’s so important to disclose.

Nutrition Policy Is Informed by Politics and Religion—Not Just Science

In a perfect world, dietary guidelines and nutritional policy would be the product of a thorough and dispassionate review of the available scientific evidence and not be unduly influenced by politics—and certainly not by religion. Dissenting views that are well informed would be not only welcomed but encouraged. As Syd Shapiro once said, “We should never forget that good science is skeptical science.”

Alas, we don’t live in a perfect world. In our world, dissenting views are are not welcomed; they’re suppressed. Dr. D. Mark Hegsted, a founding member of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health, made this opening remark in the 1977 McGovern hearing:

The diet of Americans has become increasingly rich—rich in meat, other sources of saturated fat and cholesterol … [and] the proportion of the total diet contributed by fatty and cholesterol-rich foods … has risen.

The only problem with this statement is that it directly contradicted USDA economic data which suggested that total calories and the availability of meat, dairy, and eggs at the time of the report were equivalent or marginally less than amount consumed in 1909. Full-fat dairy consumption was lower in 1977 than 1909, having declined steadily from 1950 to 1977. (9) Other evidence that contradicted Dr. Hegsted’s opinion was also ignored.

The feedback from the scientific community on the McGovern Report was “vigorous and constructive,” explicitly stated the “lack of consensus among nutrition scientists,” and presented evidence for the diversity of scientific opinion on the subject. (10) Other countries, such as Canada and Great Britain, also noted the lack of consensus on whether dietary cholesterol intake should be limited. U.S. senators issued the following statement about the McGovern Report:

It is clear that science has not progressed to the point where we can recommend to the general public that cholesterol intake be limited to a specified amount. The variances between different individuals are simply too great. A similar divergence of scientific opinion on the question of whether dietary change can help the heart illustrates that science cannot yet verify with any certainty that coronary heart disease will be prevented or delayed by the diet recommended in this report. (See footnote)

Nevertheless, these cautionary words were ignored, and the recommendations from the McGovern Report were adopted. This kicked off the fat and cholesterol phobia that would grip the United States for the next four decades.

Religion Can Impact Nutrition Guidelines

Another example of how non-scientific factors drive nutrition policy is the influence of the Seventh Day Adventists on public health recommendations in the United States and around the world. Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) is a Protestant denomination that grew out of the Millerite movement in the United States. Health has been a focus of SDA teachings since the inception of the church in the 1860s. According to Wikipedia:

Adventists are known for presenting a “health message” that advocates vegetarianism and expects adherence to the kosher laws, particularly the kosher foods described in Leviticus 11, meaning abstinence from pork, shellfish, and other animals proscribed as “unclean.” The church discourages its members from consuming alcoholic beverages, tobacco or illegal drugs. ... In addition, some Adventists avoid coffee, tea, cola, and other beverages containing caffeine.

Ellen White, an early SDA church leader, received her first major health reform vision in 1863, and “for the first time, God’s people were urged to abstain from flesh food in general and from swine’s flesh in particular.” Most SDA diet beliefs are based on White’s health visions.

White believed that the church had a duty to educate the public about health as a way to control desires and passions. Adventists continue to believe that eating meat stirs up “animal passions,” and that is one of the reasons for avoiding it.

Another early SDA leader, Lenna Cooper, was a dietitian who cofounded the American Dietetics Association, which continues to advocate a vegetarian diet to this day. Cooper wrote textbooks and other materials that were used in dietetic and nursing programs, not only in the United States but around the world, for more than 30 years. The SDA Church established hundreds of hospitals, colleges, and secondary schools and tens of thousands of churches around the world—all promoting a vegetarian diet—and played a major role in the development and mass production of plant-based foods, such as meat analogues, breakfast cereals, and soy milk. (11)

Adventists have been behind much of the early research on vegetarian diets at Loma Linda University in San Diego, where SDA leaders established a dietetics department in 1908. This was an ostensibly scientific endeavor at a university that was established by a religious group that believed vegetarianism was ordained by God.

If you think this raises a huge red flag for allegiance bias, you’re not wrong. In fact, as Jim Banta pointed out in a fascinating review of the SDA influence on diet, administrators at Loma Linda University in the mid-1900s initially discouraged research on vegetarian diets because “if you find the diets of vegetarians are deficient, it will embarrass us.” That is not the attitude of skepticism and open-minded inquiry that characterizes good science.

My Final Thoughts on Nutrition Research

I’d like to conclude with the opening two paragraphs of a recent open letter that scientists Edward Archer and Chip J. Lavie wrote to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

“Nutrition” is now a degenerating research paradigm in which scientifically illiterate methods, meaningless data, and consensus-driven censorship dominate the empirical landscape. Since the 1950s, there was a naïve but politically expedient consensus that a person’s usual diet could be measured simply by asking what he or she remembered eating and drinking. Despite the credulous and unfalsifiable nature of this memory-based method, investigators used it to produce hundreds of thousands of publications and acquire billions of taxpayer dollars.

Over time, the sustained funding of demonstrably pseudo-scientific research methods has subverted the self-correcting nature of science and suppressed skeptical scholarship. Consequently, many decades of politics taking precedence over critical inquiry produced contradictory dietary guidelines, failed public policies, and the continued confusion over “what-to-eat.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

What do you think about the latest nutrition headlines? Do you read the newest research with skepticism? Let me know below in the comments—and be sure to check out Part 1 of this two-part series!

Staff of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, United States Senate. Dietary Goals for the United States. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office; December 1977.

The post Why You Should Be Skeptical of the Latest Nutrition Headlines: Part 2 appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com September 26, 2018 at 11:54PM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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afanbeingatheart · 3 years ago

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what follows the cut is a whole bunch of information about the services that organization for transformative works offers and a bit about their finances. i know all this because i think the otw is a fantastic organization and earlier today, i was reading their annual report for 2020 which was just released. it's a fantastic report and they're very transparent about their finances! if you don't want to read it from me, a random internet person, here's a link to their report: https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-2020-annual-report-is-now-available/

first point: op is absolutely correct about the developers! i guarantee you that if they did not have a truly insane number of volunteers otw would not be able to run. otw has over 900 volunteers who help to run the whole kit and caboodle, which, mind you, is MUCH more than just ao3. they do a lot of work to preserve and contribute to fan history and culture in:

their wiki, fanlore, which is constantly being updated with fandoms, tropes, genres, history, etc

their project, open doors, which preserves and archives fan sites at risk of deletion. they did a lot of work last year what with the announcement of the closing of yahoo groups

their international peer reviewed academic journal, transformative works and cultures, that publishes 3 issues a year

their website, fanhackers, which collects academic sources on fan culture with a focus on what is free and accessible so any fan who wants to know more about fan culture can learn, and helps people who are looking for something specific

their legal advocacy team, who are why authors like anne rice are no longer an existential threat to fandom, because if an author tries to sue fan creators, there are lawyers! this legal team regularly submits briefs for cases regarding copyright to the supreme court, and got and renews every three years an exception to the dmca that protects vidders. one of them testified in front of the senate judiciary committee about the dmca!

they even gave a grant to someone who is writing a book about the history of fanvidding?? cool

on to ao3: they got 17 BILLION views on the website in 2020. 17,000,000,000. they have to maintain nearly $700,000 worth of servers running to keep the website up. they got 18,000 support tickets last year. they have over 3 million users and 7 million fanworks. not to mention they are constantly updating the site and trying to make it a better user experience. remember the sexy times with wangxian fiasco earlier this year? that was fixed phenomenally fast. (side note, as someone who has some experience with databases, their tagging system is genius)

it’s not like they’re spending a large portion of their funds on fundraising costs either. fundraising is about 11-12% of their expenses which (i’m not a non profit expert but) from the googling i did, seems to be about average. 49-50% of that is just processing fees from credit card payments. another 39% is the little gifts they send to people who make large donations. the remaining 11-12% is the software they use to track otw members and the donations, and in-kind expenses, which (again i’m not a non profit expert) seem to be the expenses associated with processing a special kind of donation.

now, if an organization was just out to make as much money as possible, i’d quite frankly expect to see more money put into fundraising. perhaps take out some ads? or hire a company to make phone calls to people? but instead otw just puts up an unobtrusive banner on their sites and makes posts on their social media

AND what would be their goal in collecting a lot of money?? all of the people who run otw are volunteers. none of them even get paid. and it’s good for companies to have some money stored up! there are people who are saying that they should give what donation they get that goes over their budgeted expenses. if something horrific were to happen, like all of the servers were somehow destroyed how are they supposed to replace over half a million dollars worth of equipment? not to mention the cost of setting them back up, etc. if disney were stupid enough to try and sue them, do you think that'd be cheap? unforeseen expenses pop up and having money in the bank is good for covering those. and it's not like otw hasn't been expanding what they've been doing either as they've grown (the grant given for the book on vidding, for example)

tl;dr: otw does A LOT, their fundraising costs are reasonable, nobody is getting rich off of this, and emergency funds are good

The new Ao3 wank I can't escape is that it sounds like the site has 1.5 million in funds and someone in a finance meeting said that could keep them running for 2-3 years. This is a "suspicious" and "unheard of" amount of money for a nonprofit to have, and I'm hearing all sorts of overblown takes about how it's proof that OTW is run by a bunch of clueless and incompetent people and no one should donate to them again. e.o

–

1.5 million… so… like 3 high level developers for 1 year.

#otw #ao3 #it is not illegal for a non profit to have money #otw is very transparent #you can literally check all of this yourself

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years ago

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Podcasting "Qualia"

This week on my podcast, I read “Qualia,” my May, 2021 Locus Magazine column about quantitative bias, epidemiology, antitrust and drug policy. It’s a timely piece, given the six historic antitrust laws that passed the House Judiciary Committee last week:

https://doctorow.medium.com/moral-hazard-and-monopoly-42e30eb159a8

The pandemic delivered some hard lessons about quantitative bias — that’s when you pay attention to the parts of a problem that you can do math on, not because they’re the most important, but because you know how to do math.

The most obvious lesson comes from the failure of exposure notification apps, which were supposed to take the place of “shoe-leather” contact tracing, wherein a public health workers establish personal rapport with infected people to help identify others who might be at risk.

Contact tracing is a human process, built on trust: trust enough to talk about the intimate details of your life, trust enough to take advice on how to get tested and whether you should self-isolate.

That’s not what apps do.

Exposure notification apps measure whether a Bluetooth device you registered was close to another Bluetooth device for a “clinically significant” period of time.

That’s it.

They don’t measure qualitative aspects, like whether you were close to an infected person because you were in the same traffic jam in adjacent, sealed automobiles — or whether you were both at the Ft Lauderdale eyeball-licking championship.

And they certainly don’t create the personal rapport that’s needed to understand each person’s idiosyncratic health circumstances and complications — whether they need child care, or are at risk of losing their under-the-table jobs if they self-isolate.

We didn’t want to commit the resources to do contact tracing at scale, we didn’t know how to automate it — but we did know how to automate exposure notification, so we incinerated the qualitative elements and declared the dubious quantitative residue to be sufficient.

It’s the quant’s version of searching for your car keys under the lamp-post because it’s too dark where you dropped them.

It’s not just foolish, it’s also deceptive — quantizing qualitative elements is a subjective exercise that produces numbers that seem objective.

This is where antitrust law comes in. Prior to the neoliberal revolution of the Reagan years, antitrust concerned itself with “harmful dominance,” with regulators asking whether mergers and commercial practices were bad for the world.

Obviously, “bad for the world” is hard to measure. Regulators evaluated claims from all corners: both political scientists worried about the outsized lobbying power of large companies and workers worried about monopolies’ outsized power over wages and conditions got a say.

So did environmentalists, urban planners, and yes, economists, too.

The Chicago School — hard-right conservative economists with cult-like status among Reagan and big business simps — insisted that all this qualitative stuff had to go.

They argued that consideration of qualitative elements left too much up to judges, so two similar companies engaged in similar conduct might get different verdicts out of the antitrust system. This, they said, make a mockery of the notion of “equal treatment before the law.”

Instead, the Chicago Boys — led by Robert Bork, a Nixonite criminal and a sort of court sorcerer to Reagan — demanded that qualitative measures be left behind in favor of a purely quantitative analysis of whether a monopoly hurt “consumer welfare.”

The way you’d measure “consumer welfare” was by checking to see whether a monopoly was making prices go up — if not, the monopoly was deemed “efficient” and thus socially beneficial. Prices are numbers, numbers can be measured.

But that’s not how it worked in practice. When two companies wanted to merge, they could hire a Chicago fixer to construct a mathematical model that “proved” that they resulting megafirm would not raise prices.

No one could argue with this, because Chicago School consultants had a monopoly over building and interpreting these models — the same way court magicians laid exclusive claim to the ability to slaughter an animal and read the future in its guts.

And if the prices did go up? Well, the same Chicago model-makers would be paid to produce a new model to prove that the price-rises were not the result of monopoly, but rather, rising energy costs or higher wages or the moon being in Venus.

Even by their own lights, “consumer welfare” was a failure. Monopolies drive prices up. Amazon Prime is a tool to drive up prices in every store, not just Amazon:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

Apple’s App Store monopoly drives up app prices:

https://www.engadget.com/2019-05-13-supreme-court-apple-app-store-price-fixing-lawsuit.html

Luxxotica bought every eyewear brand and every eyewear retailer and the world’s largest optical lens manufacturer and drove prices up 1000%:

https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-glasses-lenscrafters-luxottica-monopoly-20190305-story.html

The highly concentrated pharma industry raises prices every single year:

https://patientsforaffordabledrugs.org/2021/01/14/2021-price-hikes-pr/

What’s more, there’s a straight line from “consumer welfare” to price-fixing.

Think about publishing. A decade ago, the Big Six publishers were embroiled in a bid to force Amazon to raise ebook prices, which led to fines and settlements for harming “consumer welfare.”

Today, the Big Six publishers are the Big Four, because Random House, the largest publisher in the world, gobbled up Penguin and Simon & Schuster. When RH, S&S and Penguin were three companies, it was illegal for them to collude on pricing.

But after their mergers, the three former CEOs — now presidents of divisions within an unimaginably giant company — can meet in a board room and plan exactly the same price-fixing strategy, and that isn’t illegal under “consumer welfare” antitrust — it’s “efficient.”

The Chicago School’s “consumer welfare” was only ever a front for “shareholder welfare,” the ability of large firms to avoid “wasteful competition” and extract an ever-larger share of the take for shareholders at the expense of customers, workers and the public.

The entire business of “consumer welfare” is a fraud, starting with Robert Bork’s insistence that a close reading of the US’s four major antitrust laws will reveal that they were never intended to be used for any purpose *other* than consumer welfare protections.

This is manifestly untrue, a Qanon-grade conspiracy that is refuted by the plain language of the statutes, the statements of their sponsors, and the record of the Congressional debates leading to their passage.

Despite the wealth of evidence that US antitrust is not a “consumer welfare” project, neoliberals have insisted that their project was not “reforming” antitrust, but rather, “restoring” it to its original purpose.

It’s a Big Lie, and they know it. That’s why GOP Senators Mike Lee (UT) and Chuck Grassley (IA) introduced “The TEAM Act to Reform Antitrust Law” — a bill intended to neutralize the muscular new antitrust bills that just passed the House committee.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2021/06/25/the-plan-to-water-down-antitrust-reform/

The bill does two things:

It takes antitrust authority away from the FTC, sidelining the incredible Lina Khan, a once-in-a-generation antitrust scholar who now runs the agency; and

It codifies “consumer welfare” as the basis for US antitrust law.

That second part is the tell: after 40 years of insisting that any rational reading of US antitrust proved that “consumer welfare” was obviously its sole purpose, they’re now introducing a law to *change* its purpose to “consumer welfare.”

Like the Stolen Election lie, they never truly believed this one. The pose of objectivity that quantizing antitrust allowed was never about creating a truly objective standard for competition policy — it was only ever about neutering competition policy.

The thing is, there is a way to integrate both the objective and subjective into policy-making — as was demonstrated by David Nutt’s 2008 leadership of the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, which established the policy framework for a wide range of drugs.

Nutt’s panel of experts rated drugs based on how harmful they were to their users, the users’ families, and wider society. This allowed him to sort drugs into three categories:

Drugs that were dangerous irrespective of your public health priorities;

Drugs that were safe irrespective of your public health priorities; and

Drugs whose safety changed based on whether you prioritized the safety of users, families or society.

Those priorities are a political choice, not an empirical finding. Nutt told Parliament that it was their job to establish those subjective priorities, and once they did, he could objectively tell them how to embody them in the rules for each drug.

This is a beautiful example of how the objective and subjective fit together in policy — and the tale of what happened next is a terrible example of how “consumer welfare” hurts us all.

You see, booze is one of the most concentrated industries in the world. The “consumer welfare” standard let booze companies buy one another until just a handful remain — globe-straddling collosii with ample resources to influence policy-makers.

Nutt, an empiricist, reported just as rigorously on the harms of booze — one of the most dangerous drugs in the world — as he did on other drugs. He was fired for refusing to retract his true statement that tobacco and alcohol were more dangerous than many banned drugs.

Thanks to “consumer welfare” antitrust, the alcohol industry is able to choose who its regulators are, and use their political influence — purchased with the excessive profits of a monopolist — to rid themselves of pesky officials who actually pursue objective policy.

You can read the column here:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

And here’s the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2021/06/28/qualia/

As well a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the @InternetArchive; they’ll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_395/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_395_-_Qualia.mp3

And here’s a link to my podcast feed:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

Image: OpenStax Chemistry: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Figure_24_01_03.jpg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT IDEAS

Object-oriented programming in the 1980s. If it can work to start a startup. Instead of building stuff to throw away, you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of startups grow out of them. Already spreading to pros I know you're skeptical they'll ever get hotels, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it. Those are both good things to be. I don't mean that as some kind of answer for, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting. When someone's working on a problem that seems too big, I always ask: is there some way to give the startups the money, though. What would it even mean to make theorems a commodity? There seem to be an artist, which is even shorter than the Perl form.1 However, a city could select good startups.2

Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a complete system for supporting server-based applications, where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program very quickly. Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over. But a hacker can learn quickly enough that car means the first element of a list and cdr means the rest. If an increasing number of startups founded by people who know the subject from experience, but for doing things other people want. It could be the reason they don't have any.3 An interactive language, with a small core of well understood and highly orthogonal operators, just like the core language, that would be better for programming. The more of a language as a set of axioms, surely it's gross to have additional axioms that add no expressive power, simply for the sake of efficiency.

One of the MROSD trails runs right along the fault. When you're young you're more mobile—not just because you don't have to be downloaded. The fact is, most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The three old guys didn't get it. PL/1: Fortran doesn't have enough data types. What programmers in a hundred years? Just wait till all the 10-room pensiones in Rome discover this site.4 Common Lisp I have often wanted to iterate through the fields of a struct—to push performance data to the programmer instead of waiting for him to come asking for it. It would be too much of a political liability just to give the startups the money, though. And they are a classic example of this approach. For one thing, real problems are rare and valuable skill, and the de facto censorship imposed by publishers is a useful if imperfect filter.

I'm just not sure how big it's going to seem hard. Often, indeed, it is not dense enough. If the hundred year language were available today, would we want to program in today. Of course, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960. A friend of mine rarely does anything the first time someone asks him. As a young founder by present standards, so you have to spend years working to learn this stuff. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.

You can write programs to solve, but I never have. One advantage of this approach is that it gives you fewer options for the future. Otherwise Robert would have been too late. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life.5 Java also play a role—but I think it is the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, and I felt it had to be prepared to explain how it's recession-proof is to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway. The real question is, how far up the ladder of abstraction will parallelism go? Anything that can be implicit, should be. New York Times, which I still occasionally buy on weekends. So I think it might be better to follow the model of Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a lot of them weren't initially supposed to be startups. It's because staying close to the main branches of the evolutionary tree pass through the languages that have the smallest, cleanest cores. The way to learn about startups is by watching them in action, preferably by working at one. At the very least it will teach you how to write software with users.

Few if any colleges have classes about startups. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots. It might help if they were expressed that way. It's enormously spread out, and feels surprisingly empty much of the reason is that faster hardware has allowed programmers to make different tradeoffs between speed and convenience, depending on the application.6 At the top schools, I'd guess as many as a quarter of the CS majors could make it as startup founders if they wanted is an important qualification—so important that it's almost cheating to append it like that—because once you get over a certain threshold of intelligence, which most CS majors at top schools are past, the deciding factor in whether you succeed as a founder is how much you want to say and ad lib the individual sentences. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. Preposterous as this plan sounds, it's probably the most efficient way a city could select good startups. Most will say that any ideas you think of new ideas is practically virgin territory. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Whatever computers are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in.7 That was exactly what the world needed in 1975, but if there was any VC who'd get you guys, it would at least make a great pseudocode.

If this is a special case of my more general prediction that most of them grew organically. Writing software as multiple layers is a powerful technique even within applications. The more of your software will be reusable. Using first and rest instead of car and cdr often are, in successive lines. Of course, I'm making a big assumption in even asking what programming languages will be like in a hundred years? It must be terse, simple, and hackable. It becomes: let's try making a web-based app they'd seen, it seemed like there was nothing to it. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched.8

The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. That's how programmers read code anyway: when indentation says one thing and delimiters say another, we go by the indentation. You need that resistance, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones. Maybe this would have been a junior professor at that age, and he wouldn't have had time to work on things that maximize your future options. How much would that take? It's important to realize that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand.9 You'll certainly like meeting them. It's not the sort of town you have before you try this. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. I'm not a very good sign to me that ideas just pop into my head.

Notes

Dan wrote a prototype in Basic in a series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was 10.

With the good groups, just harder. Which in turn the most successful founders still get rich from a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a great one.

There are two simplifying assumptions: that the only way to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's not as facile a trick as it was putting local grocery stores out of their portfolio companies. If the next one will be familiar to anyone who had worked for a really long time? One new thing the company they're buying.

If I paint someone's house, the growth in wealth in a bar. I didn't need to warn readers about, just as much the better, but they start to be about 50%. Together these were the impressive ones. Other investors might assume that P spam and P nonspam are both.

All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. The point where things start with consumer electronics.

If they're on boards of directors they're probably a cause them to keep them from the VCs' point of a press hit, but that we wouldn't have understood why: If you have two choices and one or two, and so on. But if so, or in one where life was tougher, the same reason parents don't tell the whole story. Incidentally, the switch in mid-twenties the people they want.

Trevor Blackwell points out, First Round Capital is closer to a clueless audience like that, except in the median VC loses money. Unless of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you care about, just those you should seek outside advice, and this trick, and so don't deserve to keep them from leaving to start or join startups. There is not much to seem big that they only even consider great people.

You also have to do it right. In every other respect they're constantly being told that they are bleeding cash really fast. Probably more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was.

In theory you could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities. If you have the concept of the reason for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was no great risk in doing a small proportion of the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power. As I was there was near zero crossover. Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the evolution of the next year they worked.

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pihl14mcgowan-blog · 6 years ago

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Google Voice App Now Available

While sitting in front of the television and playing video games may be one of the factors that makes children fat, nutrition educators are using some of the same media to teach students proper nutrition. You can communicate with NPCs through voice and gesture recognition - the Game-Pads camera will lip read and help recognize your commands better than conventional voice recognition. The truth was that Brahms, didn't hate school, he loved it. His friends weren't mean to him, but sometimes they wanted to use the red race car too, or wanted a turn deciding what to build that day. Immediately after breaking out of jail, Bob starts his journey of serial theft, and it is up to you to help him. This all stems from our ability to genuinely ask for and graciously receive the support of other people. The platform is really little more than a data store on your iPhone, and apps can write information into and pull information out of it. Some apps do both, though others may only input data or retrieve it. However, these new enterprises are facing two key local challenges: the country's increase in foreign food imports and the continued supermarket duopoly and dominance of big food manufacturers in the supply chain. Some companies today use Byte to offer food and drinks for free to employees who are working after a certain hour, for example. I want to make this a place you can ask anything, a place where you can get inside knowledge that will give you some comfort and peace as a parent. With http://invaloaredecumparare.com of life boosted in Clash of Clans world, we've come up with a guide to help you get started and spend as little real money as possible. A 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola, for example, has 65 grams of sugar, or 130 percent of the recommended daily value. For those willing to pay $4.99 to unlock it, a food scanner facility means that users can scan the UPC barcode of the food they eat instead of look it up themselves. The two types of food are specified in the top left corner and they change each run. Included with his comment is here is a great little library of weight loss topics such as the dreaded weight Plateaus” and vegetarian diets.” Similar to Livestrong, the MyNetDiary website database requires internet access and syncs your data among your devices. Using the app's nutrition interface menu, see how many kilojules your child is burning each day, and plan meals accordingly. However asking the same question twice in a row is cheating, God will know and just give you a random answer. In our app you will be able to view and interact with the personalised food plan that we have created JUST FOR YOU Login to your extensive Nutrition Members page and view all the meals we have planned for your personal health and fitness goals. If I had a voice on the conference call, I'd be sure to ask some of these questions. GrubHub is a web-based food delivery service that's available in hundreds of U.S. cities. In addition, the app conveniently has writing pages that let students write essays, take notes and ask questions from inside the app. After all, according to CEO and co-founder Suneel Gupta, food is the area around their personal health where people generally pay the least attention. Studies show magnesium may play a role in helping us snooze through the night Munchies high in protein usually contain tryptophan, an amino acid that increases serotonin levels that aid in sleep , according to the Cleveland Clinic. The Help's representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy - a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.. Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. There's fast food and there's a lot of rampaging as you run around blasting hipsters with junk food until they explode. It seems like the lesson he learned is definitely better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. But the company knew that tracking food intake by itself wasn't going to be the most comprehensive view of a user's health or how they could improve it. As a result, the company is taking its first step toward a more complete solution by incorporating activity data through an integration with Apple's HealthKit. It is a helpful tool as you may find yourself interested to see how you happened upon a word. It's a trap that many nutrition enthusiasts tend to fall into — but it's simply not true. Uber began investing millions” in a network of support centers in various places over the last couple of years, including Chicago (US), Phoenix (US), Limerick (Ireland), Krakow (Poland), Wuhan (China), Hyderabad (India) and Manila (The Philippines) to help with quicker response times, but the communication between company and user needed something more native than email. The startup's pitch of course fits well into this ongoing storyline of companies that are aiming to increase productivity and efficiency, whether that's more efficiently skipping food or pushing buttons on a phone to get a car, or a snack, or anything really, send to your current location on demand. Zesty CEO David Langer said the company also uses algorithms and data analytics for menu planning, and to predict and optimize logistics. If you want to make crafting, base building and the many benefits of both a central part of your Fallout 4 experience, there are a couple of things you need to know. After all, I'm not a hardcore Fitbit user trying to use it to meet any real fitness goal; I'm just intrigued by data. Weight Tracker is an easy to use app for iPad to help you monitor and keep track of your weight. It is a bit sad to have to justify the need for proper writing by labeling it a sickness… I'm pleased that Siri does a good job at helping write well. I was quite surprised at how I almost serendipitously discovered a naturopath, a nutritionist I knew back east that my wife and I saw right before I published Getting Things Done”. When Pokemon food in the anime is prepared by humans, it typically consists of various combinations of plants, fruits, and Berries and resembles dry cat/dog food. I'm not a fan of Wetherspoon's food but, seeing as I don't go into Wetherspoon's pubs it doesn't really have that much of an impact on my life. He says the same thing can happen with food if enough people give real food a chance. Looking even farther down the line, Abrams said the Chef Watson team is interested in forging more commercial partnerships with cooking school chefs, restaurant chains and other food industry professionals from consumer product manufacturers to grocery stores. Cocoa is a rich source of dietary polyphenols And the cacao flavonoids can help boost mood and sustain clear thinking. While a cursory glance at Food Frenzy might suggest that it takes a large portion of inspiration from the previously mentioned Cooking Mama, it only showcases two mini-games that come anywhere close to replicating the experience of Office Create's title. This is where you come in. Taking control of the diminutive Jerry, you must use a piece of jelly to bounce each piece of food into the basket on the right of the screen.

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paleorecipecookbook · 6 years ago

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Will a Low-Carb Diet Shorten Your Life?

Last week, a new study was published in The Lancet that claimed to find that both very-low- and very-high-carb diets shorten our lifespan. Predictably, the mainstream media jumped on this finding without doing a shred of due diligence—more on that below—and we were subjected to splashy headlines like this:

Low-carb diets could shorten life, study suggests (BBC News)

Low and high carb diets increase risk of early death, study finds (CNN)

Low-carb diet may cut years off life, study suggests (Newsweek)

Your low-carb diet could be shortening your life (Fast Company)

Paleo fail: meat-heavy low-carbohydrate diets can shorten lifespan, researchers say (South China News)

I’ve been writing about health and nutrition for more than a decade now, and without fail, at least once a year a study like this is published. I could set my watch to it.

Understandably, my Twitter, Facebook, and email accounts blow up with messages from concerned readers, who want to know if the diet they are following is going to kill them.

Each year, my response is the same: no, your nutrient-dense, whole-foods diet that includes animal products is not going to give you a heart attack, increase your risk of cancer or other chronic diseases, or shorten your lifespan. In fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect.

Why Eating Low Carb Won't Kill You

This year, it’s no different. In this article, I’m going to give you seven reasons why you should take the recent Lancet study with a huge grain of salt. If you’ve been following my work for some time, I hope you’ll recognize many of the shortcomings of the study, because you’ve seen them before:

Using observational data to draw conclusions about causality

Relying on inaccurate food frequency questionnaires (FFQs)

Failing to adjust for confounding factors

Focusing exclusively on diet quantity and ignoring quality

Meta-analyzing data from multiple sources

Unfortunately, this study has already been widely misinterpreted by the mainstream media, and that will continue because:

Most media outlets don’t have science journalists on staff anymore

Even so-called “science journalists” today seem to lack basic scientific literacy

The devil is always in the details, but details aren’t sexy and don’t generate clicks.

Most people—medical professionals and the general public alike—will just read the sensationalized headlines and assume that they are true. The percentage of the population that will find their way to a critique of the study like this, read it in its entirety, and comprehend it, is disappointingly low. This is what we’re up against. So, if you are reading this, please share it with anyone that you think would benefit.

Are you concerned about recent news regarding low-carb diets? Don’t be. Here’s why eating low carb isn’t likely to shorten your lifespan.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the issues with this study.

1. The Data Were Observational, and Significant Caveats Apply

As I explained in a podcast called “A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Research,” an observational study is one that draws inferences about the effect of an exposure or intervention on subjects where the researcher or investigator has no control over the subject. It’s not an experiment where they are directing a specific intervention (like a low-carb diet) and making things happen. Instead, the researchers are just looking at populations of people and making guesses about the effects of a diet or lifestyle variable.

An example of an observational study would be in comparing rates of lung cancer in smokers and nonsmokers. They might look retrospectively at groups of people who smoke and groups of people who don’t smoke, see what the rates of lung cancer are in each of those groups, and then draw some conclusions.

Repeat After Me: Correlation Is Not Causation

One of the key things to understand about observational studies is that you can’t establish causation from observational studies. You can establish a correlation or an association between two variables, but you can’t establish causation conclusively.

If you take a class on research methodology, you’ll often hear some silly examples of how observational data can be misinterpreted. Consider the statement, “The more firefighters that are sent to a fire, the more damage gets done.” Obviously that’s not how it works. It’s not that more firefighters are causing the damage. It’s that when fires are worse, more firefighters are required to fight it, so the causation there is reversed.

Another one would be, “Children who get tutored get worse grades than children who don’t get tutored.” Again, the causality is reversed. Children who are not getting good grades are more likely to hire tutors, or their parents will.

Consider a more relevant example. For decades, observational research suggested a correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and heart disease. This led to public health recommendations to limit cholesterol in the diet and generations of people unnecessarily torturing themselves with egg white omelettes (or even worse, Egg Beaters!), boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and (gasp!) margarine. Today, we now know that dietary cholesterol does not contribute to an increased risk of heart disease, and virtually all industrialized countries in the world—including the United States as of 2016—do not suggest limits to intake of cholesterol in their dietary guidelines.

It boils down to this: observational studies are good for generating hypotheses, not for proving that a specific variable causes a specific outcome.

To do that, you need a randomized, controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, study participants are randomly assigned to two groups: a treatment group that receives the intervention being studied, and a control group that does not. The participants are then observed for a specific period of time.

This Lancet study was observational, not experimental. They simply observed participants over a 25-year period and assessed outcomes. As we’ll discuss below, this creates significant potential for error when attempting to draw conclusions.

2. The Study Data Came From Questionnaires, Not Observation of What Participants Ate

Do you accurately remember what you ate on March 15th, 2014? How about during the month of November 2015? I didn’t think so. Yet this is exactly the methodology in the studies analyzed in this report to determine participants’ carbohydrate intake.

More specifically, the underlying studies used FFQs. In an FFQ, researchers ask participants how much they ate of certain foods over a given time period. Not surprisingly, FFQs have been criticized for their inaccuracy for several reasons: (1, 2)

People tend to underreport foods socially considered “bad,” like red meat and alcohol

People overreport foods socially considered “good,” such as vegetables and fruits

People may not know all the ingredients in restaurant or prepared foods

People don’t weigh or otherwise measure portion sizes

People find tracking every bite and meal inconvenient

People are human and just can’t remember every little thing they eat

People’s diets tend to change over long periods of time

Also, as you might suspect, the further back in the past participants are asked to recall their diet, the less accurate an FFQ will be. In the Lancet study, the subjects’ diets were only assessed twice throughout a 25-year period, separated by an interval of six years.

This means that people were asked to report on what they ate over a previous six-year period. And even then, the FFQs only covered 12 years of that 25-year period.

So, one way to think about the Lancet paper is that it’s an analysis of self-reported answers on two questionnaires about how much carbohydrate participants ate over a period of a quarter century.

3. Confounding Factors Were Not Adequately Controlled For

One of the biggest problems with observational studies is that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the influence of a single variable. Human beings don’t live in highly controlled environments, and there are numerous factors that impact our health and lifespan, ranging from genetics to air and water quality, from socioeconomic status to lifestyle and behavior.

This is why most nutritional studies are met with heavy criticism. A recent article from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings even claimed that because nutrition studies “cannot be reliably, accurately, and independently observed, quantified, and confirmed or refuted,” they do not follow the scientific method and should be regarded as “pseudoscience” at best. (3)

Let’s use a simple example. Imagine you’re a scientist and you want to find out whether eating red meat increases the risk of heart attack. You recruit participants and ask them to track how much red meat they consume over 20 years. Then, you measure how many heart attacks occurred throughout the study period.

When examining the data, you notice a strong correlation between red meat consumption and heart attack. In other words, the people who ate the most red meat were the most likely to have a heart attack, and the people that ate the least red meat were the least likely to have a heart attack.

Case closed, right? Not so fast. What if the people who ate the most red meat were also more likely to smoke cigarettes, have high blood pressure and diabetes, eat more refined carbohydrates and sugar, not eat vegetables, and not exercise? In this scenario, it’s impossible to know whether the higher rate of heart attacks was caused by eating more red meat, any of these other single factors, or a combination of some or all of them.

The Healthy User Bias

The scenario I just mentioned is not hypothetical—it’s incredibly common. It’s so common, in fact, that it even has a name: the “healthy user bias.” I discussed this in detail in a 2014 podcast called “Heart Attacks and Red Meat—Correlation or Causation?,” but here’s the short version. People who engage in a behavior perceived as healthy are more likely to engage in other behaviors that are also perceived as healthy, and vice versa.

So, because red meat has been perceived as “unhealthy” for so many years, on average, people that eat more red meat are more likely to:

Smoke

Drink too much

Eat too much sugar

Not exercise, etc.

Of course, most researchers are well aware of the influence of confounding factors and the healthy user bias, and the good ones do their best to control for as many of these factors as they can. But even in the best studies, researchers can’t control for all possible confounding factors, because our lives are simply too complex.

In the Lancet paper, researchers included a study if it controlled for at least three of the following factors:

Age

Sex

Obesity

Smoking status

Diabetes

Hypertension

Hypercholesterolemia

History of cardiovascular disease

Family history of cardiovascular disease

That’s a step in the right direction. However, it still leaves huge room for confounding factors and healthy user bias. For example, say one of the studies controlled for age, sex, and whether participants were obese. That still leaves many factors—smoking status, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, history of cardiovascular disease—that could affect the outcome.

It opens up the possibility that people who were following a very-low-carb diet were more likely to have an underlying health condition like diabetes, hypertension, or high cholesterol, or that they were more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors like smoking. And in fact, that’s exactly what happened in the Lancet study. According to the authors:

“Participants who consumed a relatively low percentage of total energy from carbohydrates (i.e., participants in the lowest quantiles) were more likely to be young, male, a self-reported race other than black, college graduates, have high body mass index, exercise less during leisure time, have high household income, smoke cigarettes, and have diabetes.” [emphasis added]

That’s not surprising, is it? People who follow diets—whether very-low-carb or very-high-carb—are far more likely to have some kind of health problem that led them to start the diet in the first place. Unfortunately, this study didn’t adequately control for this almost certain fact.

This is bad enough. But it gets worse when you consider the confounding variables that weren’t even on the researchers’ list, such as:

The amount of fresh fruits and vegetables consumed

The amount of sugar they consumed

The quality of protein, fat, and carbohydrate they consumed

How much physical activity they engaged in

The question of diet quality—whether the person was eating primarily fresh, whole, nutrient-dense food or highly processed, refined food—is especially important. In the United States, we know from other research that the majority of Americans eat mostly processed and refined food. For example, a study published this year found that 60 percent of the calories Americans consume come from not just processed food—but ultra-processed food. These foods do not impact the body in the same way that fresh, whole foods do. I’ll discuss this more below.

4. Macronutrient Quality Is More Important Than Quantity

Researchers have long debated whether low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets are best for weight loss and overall health. Regardless of the macronutrient content, however, most long-term studies have reported little success in achieving and maintaining significant weight loss. In 2016, I wrote an article called “Carbohydrates: Why Quality Trumps Quantity,” in which I argued that the answer to obesity and metabolic disease lies not in how much carbohydrate we eat, but rather what types of carbohydrate we eat.

Earlier this year, a landmark study published in JAMA supported this argument and suggested that the same principles apply to fats. The researchers found that on average, people who cut back on added sugar, refined grains, and processed food lost weight over 12 months—regardless of whether the diet was low carb or low fat.

I wrote about this study in detail in an article called “Why Quality Trumps Quantity When It Comes to Diet.” Here’s the TL;DR: when the subjects focused on real, whole foods and cut processed foods out of their diet, they lost significant weight, without having to count calories or restrict energy intake.

Now, this study focused on weight loss, but it’s ludicrous to assume that the same distinction between real, whole foods and processed, refined foods wouldn’t apply to a study looking at longevity.

Consider two hypothetical people:

A person on a low-carb diet that eats primarily refined fats like industrialized seed oils (found in most processed foods and in foods cooked in restaurants)

A person on a low-carb diet that eats primarily natural fats from fresh, whole foods (meat, fish, avocados, nuts, seeds, etc.) prepared mostly at home

Is it logical to predict that these two people will enjoy the same health, protection from disease, and lifespan? Of course not. Yet that is exactly what the Lancet study did assume.

Decades of nutrition research have myopically focused on the quantity of protein, fat, and carbohydrate we eat, without considering the quality. In my mind, this is perhaps the single biggest shortcoming of the bulk of nutrition research.

5. It’s Possible to Follow a Diet That Is Both Low in Carbohydrates and High in Fresh, Nutrient-Dense Foods

It should be clear by now that the participants that were following a low-carb diet were not following a Paleo-type low-carb diet that is rich in natural, whole foods. The researchers themselves point this out:

“By contrast, the animal-based low carbohydrate dietary score was associated with lower average intake of both fruit and vegetables (appendix pp 9, 10).”

But of course it doesn’t have to be that way. A common misconception of the Paleo diet is that it’s “meat heavy,” rather than “plant based.” But consider someone who is abstaining from eating grains, dairy products, and processed and refined foods.

What might their plate consist of? A serving of protein (fish, poultry, meat), and typically two to three servings of non-starchy vegetables. Depending on their carbohydrate intake, they may also eat whole fruits (especially those lower in sugar, like fresh berries) and even starchy tubers like sweet potatoes and yams that are relatively low in carbohydrates. These foods will often be supplemented with healthy fats like nuts, seeds, avocados, or olives.

This is NOT the diet that was studied in the Lancet paper. Therefore, if this is the diet that you’re eating, the results in that paper do not apply to you.

6. Humans Can Thrive on a Variety of Macronutrient Ratios—as Long as They’re Eating Whole Foods

The Lancet study suggested that the optimal range of carbohydrate intake for a lengthy lifespan is between 50 and 55 percent of calories. Is it plausible to assume that humans can only live for a long time within such a narrow range of carbohydrate consumption? No.

That would have put us at a significant evolutionary disadvantage. Humans evolved in diverse environments around the world, and studies of contemporary hunter–gatherer populations demonstrate that we can thrive on a broad range of macronutrient ratios as long as we are following a traditional, whole-foods diet.

Carbohydrate Intake Varies in Ancestral Diets

For example, the Kitavan Islanders of Melanesia live as horticulturists, with little access to Western foods. Carbohydrates make up 60 to 70 percent of their energy intake (higher than the recommended 50–55 percent range in the Lancet study), much of that coming from fruit or tubers with a fairly high glycemic index. (4) Their saturated fat intake is also high.

Yet despite obvious similarity between Kitavan and Western diets in both macronutrient composition and glycemic index, Kitavans boast levels of fasting insulin and blood glucose that are even lower than the levels deemed healthy in Western populations. (5, 6) They also have lower levels of leptin and a virtual absence of diabetes, atherosclerosis, and excess weight. (7, 8, 9)

On the other end of the spectrum, analyses of hunter–gatherer populations, including the Masai, Kavirondo, and Turkhana, suggest that a low-carb diet (between 22 and 40 percent of calories, again lower than the 50 to 55 percent range in the Lancet study) with high intake of unprocessed meat and saturated fat does not result in poor cardiovascular or metabolic health. (10) (For more on this, see my special report on the truth about red meat.)

Critics of the Paleo diet and ancestral nutrition claim that there’s no point in studying what hunter–gatherers eat, because they all die when they’re 40 years old. This is incorrect, as I explain in this video.

While it is true that, on average, hunter–gatherers have shorter lifespans than people living in the modern, industrialized world, those averages don’t consider important challenges that are largely absent from modern life: high rates of infant and early childhood mortality (30 to 100 times higher) and deaths to trauma, warfare, and exposure to the elements, most of which are caused by a complete lack of emergency medical care.

Yet anthropological studies of modern hunter–gatherers have shown that when they have access to even the most rudimentary form of medical care (think a half-day’s walk to a rural clinic), they live life spans roughly equivalent to our own. (11, 12) But in contrast to us, they reach these ages without acquiring many of the chronic, inflammatory diseases that characterize our old age—like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s.

Consider two articles recently published in The New York Times examining the absence of chronic disease in the Tsimané, a subsistence farming and hunter–gatherer population in Bolivia.

The first article, Learning from Our Parents’ Heart Health Mistakes, reported on a study showing that the Tsimané have a prevalence of atherosclerosis 80 percent lower than ours in the United States and that nine in 10 Tsimané adults aged 40 to 94 had completely clean arteries and no risk of heart disease. (Note that the study included adults between 40 and 94 years of age; clearly they are not all dying when they’re 40!)

In a follow-up article, researchers even put to rest the old canard that hunter–gatherers don’t have “diseases of civilization” like diabetes and cardiovascular disease because they don’t live long enough to develop them:

“The Tsimané suffer from high infant-mortality rates, but those who reach adulthood live about as long as most other people, making it possible to measure their health outcomes up to age 90 and beyond.”

This in spite of the fact that the Tsimané have high rates of infection with parasites, and consume 72 percent of calories from carbohydrates—far higher than the 50 to 55 percent range suggested in the Lancet paper.

7. Meta-Analyzing Data From Multiple and Heterogeneous Sources Opens the Door to Confirmation Bias

A meta-analysis is the statistical procedure for combining data from multiple studies. They play an important role in research, but they’re also plagued with several disadvantages, which Wikipedia does a good job of summarizing. They include publication bias, statistical challenges, and, most relevant to this discussion, an “agenda-driven bias”:

“The most severe fault in meta-analysis often occurs when the person or persons doing the meta-analysis have an economic, social, or political agenda such as the passage or defeat of legislation. People with these types of agendas may be more likely to abuse meta-analysis due to personal bias. For example, researchers favorable to the author's agenda are likely to have their studies cherry-picked while those not favorable will be ignored or labeled as "not credible." In addition, the favored authors may themselves be biased or paid to produce results that support their overall political, social, or economic goals in ways such as selecting small favorable data sets and not incorporating larger unfavorable data sets. The influence of such biases on the results of a meta-analysis is possible because the methodology of meta-analysis is highly malleable.”

Another term for agenda-driven bias is “confirmation bias.” This is defined by Wikipedia as "the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories.”

Was this an issue in the Lancet paper? While we can’t be sure, it’s certainly a possibility. The paper was published by a research group that included Walter Willett, a physician and researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health who is notorious for his advocacy of a low-fat, plant-based diet. This alone is not necessarily cause to suspect confirmation bias.

However, in an unprecedented turn of events, Willett was censured in an editorial and feature article in the prestigious journal Nature for “promoting over-simplification of scientific results in the name of public health and engaging in unseemly behavior towards those who venture conclusions that differ to his.” (13)

Willett co-authored a study claiming to link aspartame with cancer, but the study was retracted by Harvard at the last minute because the data did not support that conclusion. Meanwhile, the damage had already been done by sensational media headlines like “Aspartame Causes Cancer.” Sound familiar?

In an interview with NBC News about this incident, Dr. Steven Nissen, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Cardiovascular Medicine Department, said:

“Promoting a study that its own authors agree is not definite, not conclusive and not useful for the public is not in the best interests of public health.”

What’s more, it later became clear that this study had been rejected by six journals, before finally being published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, where—surprise, surprise—Willett is a member of the editorial board.

Unfortunately, this is the reality of medical research today. I’ve written extensively about how financial conflicts of interest and fraud impact scientific findings (see “Behind the Veil: Conflicts of Interest and Fraud in Medical Research,” and “Why Are Scientists and the Public So Often At Odds?”).

But don’t take it from me. In a 2009 article called “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption,” a physician, the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, said:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”

Consider, also, a paper called “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” by John Ioannidis, a Professor of Medicine and of Health Research and Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine and a Professor of Statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences.

Ioannidis explains that in many research papers, “Claimed findings may be accurate measures of the prevailing bias.” Clearly, he struck a nerve; this paper is now the most widely cited paper ever published in the journal PLOS Medicine.

In other words, most published research findings support the status quo; they’re not necessarily based on solid evidence. Often, the research that builds on an initial study ends up perpetuating questionable findings. It’s like building a house of cards: a paper gets published that references another paper; then, a third paper gets published that references that second paper, which referenced that first paper, and so on. The assumption is that the evidence in that first paper was correct—but what if it’s not? The edifice of peer-reviewed research is not as perfect as we tend to believe.

If you’re still with us, congratulations! You now have a clearer grasp of the problems with most nutrition studies than the vast majority of journalists working today. My hope is that, armed with this knowledge, you can protect yourself from sensationalized headlines that are based on agenda-driven, poorly designed studies—and continue to follow whatever version of a nutrient-dense, whole-foods diet works best for you.

What are your thoughts on this study? Are you currently following a low-carb diet? Let me know below in the comments.

The post Will a Low-Carb Diet Shorten Your Life? appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com August 21, 2018 at 09:13PM

#paleo #recipe #food #delicious #healthy #yum #diet

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scifigeneration · 7 years ago

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Evolutionary computation has been promising self-programming machines for 60 years – so where are they?

by Graham Kendall

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What if computers could program themselves? Instead of the laborious job of working out how a computer could solve a problem and then writing precise coded instructions, all you would have to do is tell it what you want and the computer would generate an algorithm that solves your problem.

Enter evolutionary computation, which can be seen as a type of artificial intelligence and a branch of machine learning. First suggested in the 1950s, evolutionary computation is the idea that a computer can evolve its own solutions to problems, rather than humans having to go through a series of possibly complex steps to write the computer program ourselves. In theory, this would mean computer programs that might take weeks to program manually could be ready in a matter of minutes.

This idea enabled computers to solve complex problems that may not be well be understood and are difficult for humans to tackle. Computer scientists have used evolutionary computation on many problems, including formulating the best mix of ingredients for shrimp feed, portfolio optimisation, telecommunications, playing games and automated packing.

And researchers who have been studying evolutionary computation for over 60 years have made tremendous advances. It is even the subject of several scientific journals. Yet, as I noted in a recent paper, the idea still isn’t used widely outside the research community. So why isn’t evolutionary computing evolving faster?

How does evolutionary computation work?

Charles Darwin. Good Free Photos

Evolutionary computation draws on Charles Darwin’s principles of natural evolution, commonly known as survival of the fittest. That is, the weakest (less well adapted) members of a species die off and the strongest survive. Over many generations, the species will evolve to become better adapted to its environment.

In evolutionary computation, the computer creates a population of potential solutions to a problem. These are often random solutions, so they are unlikely to solve the problem being tackled or even come close. But some will be slightly better than others. The computer can discard the worst solutions, retain the better ones and use them to “breed” more potential solutions. Parts of different solutions will be combined (this is often called “crossover”) to create a new generation of solutions that can then be tested and the process begins again.

Another important element of evolutionary computation, as with natural selection, is mutation. Every so often a small, random change is made to one of the solutions being tested. This means new potential solutions can be created that wouldn’t be possible from just using crossover.

Hopefully a combination of crossover and mutation will produce new potential solutions that are better than their “parents”. This might not happen every time, but as more generations are produced, better solutions are more likely to emerge. It’s not unusual for evolutionary computation to involve many millions of generations, just as natural selection can take many millions of years to noticeably alter a living species.

Genetic programming tree. Wikimedia

One of the most popular types of evolutionary computation is genetic programming. This involves one computer program evolving another working program to tackle a specific problem. The user provides some measure of what comprises a good program and then the evolutionary process takes over, hopefully returning a program that solves the problem.

We can trace genetic programming back to the late 1980s, with one of the main proponents being John Koza. But even though it has since made significant research advances, genetic programming is not used on a daily basis by commercial organisations or home computer users. Given how tricky it can be to develop software systems that work effectively and efficiently, it would seem sensible to get computers to help in the same way they are changing many other industries.

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Selection, Mutation and Crossover.

Why hasn’t evolutionary computation been adopted?

The commercial sector hasn’t embraced evolutionary computation as it has other technologies developed by researchers. For example, 3D printing was invented in the 1980s and after a long period of development is now being used in industrial manufacturing and even by people in their homes. Similarly, augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence have emerged from the research community and become major products for big tech companies.

One of the key issues holding evolutionary computation back is the failure of researchers to focus on problems that the commercial sector would recognise. For example, computer scientists have intensively studied how evolutionary computation could be used to schedule exam timetables or working out routes for vehicles.

But researchers often only study simplified versions of problems that are of little use in the real world. For example, many vehicle routing simulations involve calculating the distance between two points using a straight line. Vehicle routes in the real world rarely follow straight lines, and have to contend with one way systems, breakdowns, legal issues (such as how long before a driver must rest), time constraints and a whole lot more. However, this complexity is actually where evolutionary computation could help. If you can adequately define the problem as it occurs in the real world, then the evolutionary algorithm should be able to deal with its complexity.

Another problem is that the solutions evolutionary computation generates are often hard to explain. For example, even though a genetic programming system might create a solution with a perfect outcome, how it actually works might be a mystery to a human programmer as the system may have produced complex code that is difficult to interpret and understand.

An evolutionary computation system is also complex to implement and support and this may put off some commercial organisations. It would help if there was an easy-to-use framework that hid much of the underlying complexity. While these frameworks exist in the scientific community, they are not easily accessible by the commercial sector, never mind home users.

IBM’s famous computer architect Frederick Brooks said that you cannot tackle increasingly large software development projects simply by throwing more people at them. It would be an immense help to the software development industry if, instead of having to manually develop every piece of a system, developers could specify the requirements of its key parts and let an evolutionary process deliver the solutions.

Graham Kendall is Professor of Computer Science and Provost/CEO/PVC at the University of Nottingham

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

#technology #artificial intelligence #software #computers #machine learning

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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STARTUPS AND COMPANY

A job means doing something people want. When a new medium arises that's powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them. If a writer rewrites an essay, people who read the old version are unlikely to complain that their thoughts have been broken by some newly introduced incompatibility. We have such labels today, of course. Are patents evil? Demand transparency. We don't need to know this stuff to program in. There are also two practical problems to consider: jobs, and graduate school. The word startup dates from the 1960s, but what they want. Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. In practice, to get good design if the intended users and figuring out what they need. Working on hard problems.

Instead of accumulating money slowly by being paid a regular wage for fifty years. It takes a while to be optimistic after events like that. It's easy to measure how much revenue they generate, and they're usually paid a percentage of the company? Startups usually win by making something so great that it's growing at 5% a week. Unfortunately there are a lot of the questions people get hot about are actually quite complicated. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a local celebrity. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can sue competitors. Applying for a patent is a negotiation. And if you can manage it, is to have the lowest income taxes, because to take advantage of dramatic decreases in cost is to increase volume. But as long as your critical spirit doesn't outweigh your hope, you'll be able to think what you want. If you had a magic machine that could on command make you a car or cook you dinner and so on.

European attitudes weren't affected by the disasters of the twentieth century; now the trend seems to be vanishingly rare in the arts could tell you that the right way to lift heavy things is to let people do the best work they can, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's inside their heads. Applying for a patent is a negotiation. I wish someone would get this point across to the present administration. The really painful thing to recall is not just something happening now in Silicon Valley. That's the good part. Few investors understand the cost that raising money from them imposes on startups. But my guess is that we see oscillations in people's idea of the corporate ladder was still very much alive. The millennia-long run of bigger-is-better left us with a lot of latent respect among the very best hackers—the medium of exchange, called the dollar, that doesn't physically exist. Certainly some rejected Google. A good programming language.

Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Michael Dell can't be a company of one person. What I'm going to take a shot at describing where these trends are leading. Maybe successful people in other industries are; I don't know enough to say whether there is a peloton of younger startups behind them. I've had several emails from computer science undergrads asking what to do has to rest with one person. Best of all, for the same reason I did look under rocks as a kid: plain curiosity. I've found that it matters a lot how code lines up on the bottom. This is a dumb plan. What does make a language that makes type declarations mandatory could be convenient to program in Lisp, but it has to be the mistaken one. Two things keep the speed of the boat. And during the Renaissance, journeymen from northern Europe were often employed to do the other. Founders are your customers, and the PR campaign surrounding the launch has the side effect of specialization.

The EU was designed partly to simulate a single, definite occupation—which is not far from the idea that each person has a natural station in life. If there are any laws regulating businesses, you can also get into Foobar State. Eventually, though, you're still designing for humans. All you need to attract. Every era has its heresies, and if not, they say they want the meretricious feature du jour, but what happens in one is very similar to the venture-backed trading voyages of the Middle Ages. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. Startups yield faster growth at greater risk than established companies. Why aren't all police interrogations videotaped? And there is a safe option, that's the worst thing you can say about it. They're determined by VCs starting from the amount the company needed to raise and let the percentage acquired vary with the market, instead of the other methods are now illegal but that it's obvious. Darwin himself was careful to tiptoe around the implications of his theory. Odds are this project won't be a class assignment.

We did. But if capital gains rates vary, you move assets, not yourself, so changes are reflected at market speeds. Boston's case illustrates the difficulty you'd have establishing a new startup hub this late in the game. They'd be far more useful when combined with some time living in a country with a strong middle class—countries where a private citizen could make a fortune without having it confiscated. What does he think that would shock her? It has a long way to run. Kids are less perceptive. I can't think of a financial advisor who put all his client's assets into one volatile stock? For centuries the Japanese have made finer things than we have in the West. If you want a potato or a pencil or a place to live, you have to say everything you think, it may be that it gives you. It's tricky to keep the old model, like runtime typing and garbage collection. Wow.

Running upstairs is hard for us would be impossible for our competitors. If you're saying something that Richard Stallman and Bill Gates would both agree with, you must be contributing at least x dollars a year. Actors and directors are fired at the end that the lines don't meet. I want to spend money on stuff. Eventually something would come up that required me to use it, and even though I've studied the subject for years, it would obviously be a good idea in the first few minutes whether you seem like you'll be one of the biggest startups almost didn't happen that there must be a hacker's language, like the US, and good high schools and bad universities, like the pyramids. And they are also different lengths, meaning that the arguments won't line up when they're called, as car and cdr often are, in successive lines. In 1960, John McCarthy published a remarkable paper in which he did for programming something like what Euclid did for geometry. If it were simply a matter of degree. This connection adds more brittleness than strength, however: make the best surgeons operate with their left hands, force popular actors to overeat, and so on. Whatever the disadvantages of working by yourself, the advantage is that the inhabitants still speak many different languages.

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