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Comment Re:There should be an easy natural observation (Score 1) 23

There have been quite a few studies that do just that. Well, not "taking lithium", as in the medication, because typical psychiatric doses of lithium (hundreds of milligrams per day) are like 2-3 orders of magnitude higher than typical dietary doses. But dietary doses themselves vary by orders of magnitude (some European studies put consumption in some places in Europe as low as a couple micrograms per day, while in places in northern Chile some people consume ~10mg per day), because lithium is so widely varied from place to place. One study found for example that one Slovakian bottled water product had 10 milligrams per litre, while the mean European bottled water had less than a microgram per litre. In most places, peoples' dietary consumption is closer to the lower end than the upper end. And the studies strongly suggest that people who naturally consume the higher amounts of lithium have lower rates dementia (there's also positive, though weaker, evidence for lower rates of violent crime and suicide). In general, it seems to be neuroprotective.

It's been argued that we should probably be lithiating water, e.g. that there should be minimum and maximum standards for lithium in drinking water the same way that there are minimums and maximums for numerous other minerals, with a provisional recommended daily intake of 1mg per day based on the evidence. But given the huge backlash to fluoride in water, I can't even imagine how harsh the backlash to lithium would be, given that people associate it with being a psychiatric medication (even though that's at doses orders of magnitude higher). It's just not going to happen.

I personally take 1mg of lithium a day. Which is well within the normal dietary range (in some places in northern Chile people naturally consume ~10mg per day!). A common supplement form is lithium orotate, but it's a weird choice - it's chosen because it's covalently bonded into a molecule which is delivered into cells whole, to "make it more effective", but A) that's not how normal dietary lithium is delivered, and B) orotic acid isn't exactly healthy. Instead, I make my own (both concentrate and diluted solution). I start with lithium carbonate, and while it's not available in food grade (anywhere I've found), it's a very common compound available at high purity (>99,5%), with easy composition tests - crimson flame test, density tests (offset by a typically poor packing density), low solubility in water but high bubbling solubility in weak acids (with no precipitate), etc). Because it's poorly soluble & tastes like baking soda / mineral water, I also add citric acid to the solution, forming lithium citrate. Even if the impurities were pure lead, the amount would still be small when you're only taking 1mg a day. But actual impurities are mostly (A) water, (B) other lithium compounds (hydroxide, chloride, sulfate, etc etc), and (C) other similar mono- and divalent cations to lithium, such as sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, plus some iron, alumium and silicon due to their ubiquity in nature and presence in processing.

Comment Re:Microsoft's Palladium is here (Score 2) 80

It is a necessity that part of the game is loaded to the client that exists beyond just the minimum required to render a picture on the screen.

Record player actions. Use randomly-selected other players' systems (from a pool of those who are playing on the same map) to verify those actions which you flag as suspicious during times when they are waiting for other players to join a match or similar.

Comment Re: Consoles (Score 1) 80

"Physically handicapped players who need custom controllers to be able to play at all can get locked out simply because the manufacturers refuse to make the needed hardware."

It's generally pretty easy to connect your own controls to the official controller's PCB, Don't the people who make such controllers know how to do that?

Comment Re: Microsoft's Palladium is here (Score 3, Interesting) 80

There is no issue with latency in detection of cheating on the server side, unless you insist on stopping it before it happens. That would be nice as it would prevent cheating, but it is not necessary. As long as you are requiring accounts, then it's good enough to detect it after it happens and ban those accounts. If cheaters had to buy another copy after every time they cheated, it would drive them out of the game.

Comment Re:Going for gold... (Score 1) 124

I think you have to include Office in the list of things they used to do "right" or at least in a way that supported their business. Notably Excel, which used to be the absolutely most usable spreadsheet that there was. IMO Word peaked with Mac version 5.1, but it used to be pretty good too. Both are now more difficult to use than LibreOffice, and also have more stupid bugs. The one that keeps irritating me with Word lately is saving a document which ends in a list. If and only if you leave the cursor on the last character of a document like that, it will add another (blank) list item AND another paragraph after it when you save. Not sure if this only happens on a quit save or not, I haven't bothered to find out, but either way it's fucking trash.

Anyway, ahem, the point is that Windows and Office had synergy. TBF though, some of that was skullduggery. Specifically, Microsoft was caught using internal functions for Office apps, where the public (published, documented) functions were literally the same functions but with a delay loop. If they had been the same function but with a semaphore they might have had a valid argument about being more familiar with their internals, but that was just obvious anticompetitive fuckery.

Comment Re:Time to end DEI (Score 1) 68

democracy is not a popularity contest

Yes, it literally is.

The idea might be that the candidates become popular if they have plans which will help the nation, but anything but 100% direct democracy is both the process and principle of allowing The People to decide who will best do that, not specifically how to do that. And nobody has a 100% direct democracy where The People vote on every decision, so every single government which describes itself as a democracy is by some percentage a popularity contest.

People are voting for the wrong reasons

Democracy is the idea that people get to vote, even if it is for the wrong reasons. If you don't want them to be able to do that, then you do not want Democracy.

Broken electoral setup, like in the USA (only 2 party, winner takes it all) makes the problem worse

Indeed, the electoral college and first past the post elections are both anti-democratic. The electoral college was instituted specifically to allow slave states to wield more power than was warranted by their policies. And FPTP ensures that people fall into the trap, by punishing them if they vote their conscience or ideals. If Democracy is what is desired then yes of course the states which attract the most population should have the most voting power, that would be Democracy!

Unfortunately, Democracy is vulnerable to Crony Capitalism, which is a typical outcome of Capitalism in general. When you allow control of production to fall to those who have the most capital, then they wield that control to get more and more capital until they have enough to corrupt every process. You simply cannot have Democracy and uncontrolled Capitalism at the same time. Yes you can have Capitalism, but you cannot have it without meaningful controls which are clearly absent in the USA, especially since Citizens United.

The Founding Fathers created this problem by not limiting the powers of political parties in the constitution. They didn't even mention them. The alleged reason for that is that they felt that they shouldn't even exist, but that's obvious bullshit. Not limiting them ensured that they would not only exist, but they could wield basically any amount of power. What we see on "both sides" is that the parties are under the control of Capital.

True democracy needs people working together, not 2 extremist sides that refuse to listen to the other side

We have two extremist sides which are extremist in both the same way and different ways. Both major parties are committed to doing the will of capital. One of them is also committed to destroying the concept of human rights, which they can do because it is only a concept. If nobody will protect your rights, they effectively do not exist. A lot of people appeal to religion to claim that they are inherent things which people have, but that's obviously false; if they were, nobody could take them away from you. You don't even have the rights to your own thoughts if you don't have the right to remain free, as people can tamper even with what you believe if they can subject you to enough abuse.

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