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Comment Re:Ketamine [Re:So, nothing really new here] (Score 1) 44

Usage rules mandate that the drug cannot be taken at home.

This part is incorrect. Many schedule 3 drugs are taken at home, legally. Ketamine in particular has no special statute governing it, and there are at-home therapy programs.

That was a quote pasted directly from the Psychology Today article linked, but a quick google shows you're right, no support for that statement. Possibly the phrase "usage rules" (PT's phrase, not mine) meant recommended practice (at the time the article was written) and is not legally binding.

That being said- absofuckinglutely your ability to make rational, correct decisions is ridiculously disrupted on ketamine.

Comment Ketamine [Re:So, nothing really new here] (Score 4, Informative) 44

Ketamine is a very commonly prescribed drug, especially over the last decade for treating PTSD. I don't know what that has to do with nazis, nor do I see any good coming from stigmatizing it. What other medicine do you like to stigmatize? Vaccines?

Ketamine is a Schedule III controlled substance: having accepted medical benefits but abuse potential. Usage rules mandate that the drug cannot be taken at home. Patients are observed at least two hours after receiving the agent and typically receive psychotherapy and other treatments for depression.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...

Quoting Gerard Sanacora, M.D., Ph.D. Director of the Yale Depression Research Program and Co-Director of Yale’s interventional psychiatry program: “Large amounts of data suggest that your ability to make rational, correct decisions is completely disrupted when you take ketamine, as long as it’s in your system... People can hear things, see things, feel things differently. The physiological and psychological reasons are the main reasons the FDA declared Spravato [Ketamine] safe only in a health care facility under supervision.”

Comment Re: How does this compare (Score 2) 43

That's what I am trying to figure out, the best I can think of is the albedo effect but microplastics is way to small to have that effect,

Yes, it's the albedo, and also yes, too small to have a significant effect compared to the main driver, the greenhouse effect..
The summary actually states this:

If the latest estimates are right, Shindell said, microplastics might not be an enormous source of atmospheric warming, compared with massive contributors such as cars and trucks, belching industrial plants or even burping cows.

But then undercuts that with

"But not a trivial one, either," he said.

Spoiler: yes, it's trivial.

Comment Re:This is misdirection (Score 5, Insightful) 154

Yet another example of whataboutism." Saying "X may be a problem" does not imply "no other problems exist, we should look at X and nothing but X".

There's another whataboutism fallacy here, accusing the person posting as having a particular opinion on a completely different issue ("And the ban of golden rice people like you supported.") What does the phrase "people like you" even mean? People posting about agriculture on slashdot that include links to NIH?

Comment Re: Not sure what to think about this (Score 4, Informative) 170

Yes it is. There are copious amounts of dystopian sci-fi talking about why governments shouldn't control breeding.

The average number of children per woman in Switzerland is 1.29, about half of the population replacement rate. Stopping population growth in Switzerland has nothing to do with controlling breeding.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/v...

Comment Laffer curve [Re:And the Death Spiral] (Score 2) 348

It depends on where a tax regime is on the curve. If taxes are very high, it hinders growth and drives people to shelter what they have. In that situation, lowering taxes leads to increased revenue as growth increases and sheltering stops being worth it.

That was Laffer's claim.
The argument he used to support this was little more than "it seem obvious, doesn't it?"

There's very little actual data showing this effect. If there is a peak in the Laffer curve (above which the tax revenue decreases with increasing tax rate), that peak must be at a tax rate much higher than what we see now. In all the cases of the US or Britain cutting income tax rates, tax revenue did not increase.
https://maseconomics.com/laffe...

Comment Laffer Curve [Re:And the Death Spiral] (Score 3, Interesting) 348

Wait, hold on, are you saying that you're aware that when taxes go up, tax revenues goes down, every single time it's ever been tried in all of US history at a regional level?

Turns out that this has not proven to be the case.

I think you misunderstand the Laffer curve. Laffer suggested that when tax rates are increased, the amount of revenue generated due to the tax would increase to some point, then at higher tax rates start level off and then to decrease, since there would be a point at which people would stop earning money if the government took too much of it away. There has always been fierce contention as to where that peak of the Laffer curve is.

The difficulty is that there never been a good analysis showing where that peak is. The US, for example, had a top marginal tax rate of 91% in the 1950s up until 1963, yet not only did corporate presidents not only stop working, the economy was booming.

So, no, the statement "when taxes go up, tax revenues goes down" is not supported by history.

Comment LCOE, and mix of energy sources (Score 3, Interesting) 75

The economic justification for nuclear power is weak in all but a few geographic locations occupied by humans.

You're rather of sweeping away a lot in that big "all but". Geographical locations are important.

And that word "a few" represents an opinion. (Which locations? What's the definition of "few"? Under what assumptions?)

I'm a strong advocate for solar power, but to be fair, the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for solar power is vastly determined by location. Most of the solar power fields currently being installed are going into places with good solar availability. That's as it should be, but as you increase the fraction of power being generated by solar, you're going to have to go to less favorable locations (or else put in transcontinental-scale transmission lines, which are expensive.) The solution is going to have to be a mix of power sources, which, yes, may well include nuclear as well as solar (not instead of solar.)

However, in support of your argument, here are a few sources for Levelized Cost of Electricity showing that, yes, for current installations LCOE indeed is favorable for photovoltaics:
  https://ourworldindata.org/gra...
  https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/a...
  https://www.iea.org/data-and-s...

Comment 40th anniversary [Re:Nuclear reactor technology] (Score 1) 75

And they pick the Russian disaster over the others... including the more modern Fukashima.

They used the Russian disaster as the starting point because the editorial is written for the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

I'm sure that when articles are written for the 40th anniversary of the Fukishima event, the articles will put Fukishima in the headline.

Comment Re:Nuclear reactor technology (Score 1) 75

The anti-nuclear bias in the report is pretty mild compared to what has been printed in the past, but seems still to be there.

You are imputing bias where there is none. The statement " nuclear reactors have seen steady improvements, adding more safety features and making them cheaper to build and operate " cannot be interpreted as "anti-nuclear bias" in any possible way.

You seem to think any mention of Chernobyl or Fukushima whatsoever must indicates bias, but that's silly. Any article that discusses the modern state of nuclear power would be amiss if it avoided mentioning these, and this one does not go into any of the scare rhetoric you might see from anti-nuclear sources. If anything, I'd say that by leaving out even the slightest suggestion that there might be any problems with nuclear power, the article is biased in favor of nuclear power

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