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Mike

mpk@awful.systems
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4 posts • 48 comments

Standard nerd.

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Mosquito nets are still an effective intervention against malaria, not least as “there’s a vaccine” is a very, very long way from “everyone is vaccinated” especially as really useful interventions such as draining marshland where A. falciparum breeds or attempting to eradicate it with insecticide are substantially harder and, also, take time. Given that half of all deaths from malaria are in children under 5 and that the malaria parasite is not transmitted between humans but from mosquitos to humans the herd immunity effect doesn’t really exist if people are still getting bitten. (FWIW, my dad literally wrote a book called “Malaria”)

EAs are wrong about a lot of stuff but they’re not wrong about malaria eradication being about more than vaccines.

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In the very late 90s - so only a year or two after the Good Friday Agreement - he gave a talk in Dublin. The only part I remember was when he went off on his tangent about access to guns being an essential component of a free society and then stood there wondering why he was suddenly being heckled.

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I was a member of the ARRL for a year just to get QST, and found that so much of the American outlook on amateur radio is so different to that here in Europe with allthe stuff about patriotism (what? no.) and prepping and massive amplifiers and driving your pickup truck to the park (here in Austria we do SOTA, not POTA :) ) that it held no real interest for me. The tech reviews were great, though.

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He’s on the hunt for that one special female who’s really, really into Ferengi.

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That’s just weird. I love voids. I’ve already given notice that our next two cats (not for a while yet, as the current two are going strong and showing no signs of keeling over) will be a void and an orange one.

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Very strong “University rag committee who spend half their time telling you how completely mad!!! they all are and the other half telling you solemnly how important the work they’re doing is” vibes here.

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You forgot to mention that Mom and Pop also benefit from their fleet being linked exclusively to the Robocharge™ charging network, which provides reliable charging 24/7 for a simple convenience fee of 25% on top of the local power company’s grid rate.

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also why does he think people will take on his “wacky” pronunciation of “Robovan” to rhyme with “gas oven”? I generally leave actually listening to Musk’s live ramblings to the professionals but damn, this guy is a terrible public speaker. Has his schtick always consisted mostly of awkward pauses and ers and ums or is this a new thing?

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Anthony Levandowski (the Waymo guy) on the robot cabs: "You’re putting the power back into the people’s hands, where a small business owner could have, you know, a fleet of 10 cars or 20 cars that they run themselves as their business. It’s a great model for the future where it’s lots of mom and pops, rather than one mega corp that does that.”

Because that is EXACTLY what will happen and it will absolutely NOT be the case that megacorps will simply do exactly what megacorps do and flood cities with robotaxis running at a loss in order to control the market and then jack up prices. No siree, it’ll be all Mom and Pop’s Friendly Robotaxi Company.

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