Plenty of things can be a “real condition” without measurable physical sources. That’s just practical/pragmatic medicine. Ala chronic fatigue syndrome.
The difference between those and more fringe stuff like chronic Lyme disease is much more of a grey area than most doctors would ever admit publicly without a huge amount of well organized backlash that largely can be summarized on “you just don’t care about sick people”. So the alternative is much more palatable to just to quietly treat them, play the game by kicking the can and deferring with “I hope science will one day advance to finding a real cause”. Wikipedia is always going to play this same game by the nature of it being a public forum attempting to appease a wide audience, it’s almost always going to play it safe.
Ultimately these are people, for the most part, who are legitimately unwell and may legitimately need care regardless, but that doesn’t make it the same as having cancer or HIV. Nor does it mean going to a doctor will give you the medicine you need.
I don't think this is correct. Meta and Google don't sell direct access to your data. They sell advertising targeting you, based on your personal data.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal to sell users email address to a data broker under GDPR.
Direct marketing is not explicitly banned. If you have a reason to believe that the data subject in question (a B2B person operating in the context of their work) is interested in buying your stuff then you could claim "legitimate interest" and process their contact details/market to them.
That's what people are relying on at the moment. Whether all the data protection authorities in all the member states will agree with the market's assessment of this remains to be seen...
Not really... they're just vertically integrated and have their own ad networks.
Consequently, they're not protecting data because they care about privacy -- they're protecting data because the wider they share the raw data, the less value it (their product) is.
It's economic self-interest, not ethics.
If they didn't have ad networks, they'd sell anything and everything in a heartbeat.
Be that as it may, their object-level behavior is still far less shady. And in fact this is an argument that it is good that they exist, because in the counterfactual world where they don't, their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information.
I used to be all gung-ho about being anti-FAANG, those evil privacy violators, but having now talked to friends who have worked at places like FB and Google, their internal data security practices are far more stringent than I had imagined (my friends complain about how difficult these rules make their jobs!). And yeah, sure, they are scooping up as much information about you as they can, and I'm not a big fan of that fact. But I have been convinced that they are actually somewhat decent stewards of that information, and the alternative is far worse.
All that being said, this is a pretty loosely-held belief, and all the surveillance and so on is quite icky to me. I'm still trying to slowly de-google my life and all that, just with a bit less paranoia and urgency.
> their niche would be filled by these non-vertically-integrated data brokers and advertisers who ARE financially incentivized to leak and sell and share far more information
I look at it a slightly different way.
Absent the vertical integration, they wouldn't dominate the market.
Absent dominating the market, they wouldn't wield as many resources.
Absent as many resources, they wouldn't have been able to build a panopticon in the first place.
And even if there were excesses in an alternate world... there would be a market of competitors, which would encourage different behavior.
And possibly even (gasp!) regulation because of the worst excesses.
Instead, FAANG wield vast resources, culled from entrenched monopoly positions, and act just responsible enough (plus lobbying) to avoid regulation.
Outside of using a Meta product or a Google product it's all completely shady. I shouldn't be tracked going to the DMV website or purchasing something online or using a dating app or going into a store or...
Stock grants are typically vested quarterly, sometimes after an initial waiting period of 1-2 years. RSUs are just cash, I don’t see how they would not be considered being paid. They certainly show up on my W2.
I didn’t say they aren’t considered being paid; I said that they’re speculative instruments in a way that a paycheck isn’t.
In other words: 700k is 700k when realized, but there’s no particular guarantee that so-and-so many units of stock are worth that much; it depends on the market. Comparing TC as if 700k is guaranteed is misleading.
Having known many conspiracy theorists... yeah. Given the US troop presence in Korea, they would say "absolutely," and they'd then adjust their tinfoil hats.
You’re not paying attention if you think this is the first evidence of long covid. There’s been significant strides towards understanding long covid in terms of microclots and viral persistence.
Parent is saying it's the first evidence of TREATMENT.
Incidentally, my bet is that many other viruses and bacteria have similar post acute symptoms. I wonder if these can also be measured and treated, perhaps even with metformin. I wonder how much of metformin's magical anti aging capabilities are actually due to fighting off latent infections.
Metformin doesn't have any "magical" anti-aging properties. It is effective for treating certain metabolic conditions such as type-2 diabetes but it has never been proven to extend lifespan in otherwise healthy humans (or any other higher primate). There are some significant negative side effects.
I meant the magical part as tongue in cheek. I guess that doesn't come across well in text. My conjecture is that the anecdotal or limited evidence could be conflated with an improvement of latent infections, which would be an inconsistent effect.
They’re quite clearly saying that the effectiveness of the treatment is actually “the first” solid evidence of the disease.
Which is wrong, it’s not the first, but it is also pretty darn good evidence to add to the pile, so it’s not that wrong. It’s just the evidence that appears to have convinced GP, which is cool to see happen in real time!
Long covid is very real and is not anxiety. There have been studies linking post covid fatigue and conditions to viral persistence and micro clotting. This type of post covid is just anxiety discourse is incredibly harmful.
This kind of discourse has been par for the course for as long as "mental illness" has existed. I don't know a single chronically ill person who hasn't gone through being undermined and treated this way.
Post viral syndrome has been been recognized for decades and linked to a wide variety of different viruses. So although the exact mechanisms aren't clearly understood there's no reason to think that SARS-CoV-2 couldn't cause similar effects.
But in terms of specific symptoms, a recent study found only a weak correlation between confirmed COVID-19 and brain fog. Other persistent symptoms such as anosmia are much more common.
This is just a case where the tools we have for examination are lacking and subjective symptom description barring specific indicators is pretty useless from a research standpoint.
What's interesting to me is how ChatGPT with GPT-4 can fail to follow your instructions randomly (for the same instructions, in the same session). That's these kind of behaviors that show it is, in fact, not intelligent, but that probabilities line up properly for the emergent behavior to look like it is.
not necessarily. It just means it's not as bad as it would be in China or Russia.
NPR knew the democrats would be back in power in a couple of years...they weren't risking much by being anti-Trump. But they did gain goodwill from the democrats, which can extend them support every time they are in power.
I am not arguing for or against either side, I am just pointing out a flaw in your logic.
I think NPR is so solidly on the democrats side, that it's hard to distinguish what came first: the chicken or the egg?
