COVID Developments and News

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

You are saying that we are progressing faster than we can keep up, and our emotional intelligence can't keep up. Do you have any specific examples that come to mind?

I'd say you're a pretty good example. You're a super smart guy but have trouble playing along with jokes.






that was a joke

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by dpfarr

While I would side with the brown skinned dominance I argue the selection idea. In a warming world where communities might go to more northern/southern regions, the need to process sunlight for vit D synth is important. While that is partially negated by modern conveniences, there might still be some biological success of that capacity in this entirely hypothetical scenario.

It hasn't been an issue, nor a determinant of success for a long time, if it ever was. We do have black people living in Alaska, Canada or Sweden without issues. The population is low on Vitamin D, but they are low on most vitamins and minerals because we are fat, lazy and don't eat healthy. Skin tone is not really an issue. If the world is getting hotter, it is much more likely that we would need more pigment than less, even if we were moving north to run away from the sun. Eskimos aren't white.

It is entirely possible that losing skin pigment wasn't about allowing more Vitamin D to be synthesized. It could have been to shed the body of a metabolically costly trait to constantly produce melanin that was no longer necessary. Melanin is synthesized from proteins and bound next to proteins, so perhaps freeing up protein resources during famine allowed lighter skin people to be more successful in environments where they didn't need skin protection. Also, cooler temperatures may have led early hominids to use skins/furs from other animals to protect their skin from the cold, so it was also not necessary to need melanin to block the sun, which is why they became so white. It is worth noting that the base state is to lack pigment, and the body gets rid of it the second it doesn't need it in all races. When exposed to the sun, our skin doesn't welcome the UV light in order to synthesize/active Vitamin D. It immediately develops melanin to shield it from the sun. Interestingly, melanin might play a role in maintaining folate levels, keeping them from degrading. White bread is now enriched with folate and women take folate/prenatal supplements to increase folate because there is a high incidence of folate related spinal tube defects when folate levels are low. My sister in law who is hispanic and wasn't actively trying to have a baby, so she wasn't on prenatal, has a daughter who had a spina bifida. It is far more likely that folate and not Vitamin D is the reason pigment was lost.

Because of this property, melanin is thought to protect skin cells from UVB radiation damage, reducing the risk of folate depletion and dermal degradation...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melani...hetic_pathways

Professor Michael Kimlin and Dr David Borradale, from QUT's AusSun Research Lab, said the study of 45 young healthy women in Brisbane aged 18 to 47, showed high rates of sun exposure accounted up to a 20 per cent reduction in folate levels.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0321095240.htm

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

I'd say you're a pretty good example. You're a super smart guy but have trouble playing along with jokes.






that was a joke

Trouble or defiant or disinterested?





Responding as if it wasn't is more fun than laughing.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Trouble or defiant or disinterested?





Responding as if it wasn't is more fun than laughing.

[dpfarr]

I just said that modern life prohibits the need of phenotype per climate. I don’t doubt that there’s a single genetic issue that is responsible. Having more surface area available to synthesize in a 30-40° land area are different than equatorial. If we’re still in my hypothetical of less healthy people based on melanoma or the issues of D deficiency, that is a sexual selection pressure (or it should be).

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

You are saying that we are progressing faster than we can keep up, and our emotional intelligence can't keep up. Do you have any specific examples that come to mind?

Hmmmm. Well, how about almost everything we as a fucking species do?

Name your subject area.

Environment (lots of braindead shit here)

treating the planet and all life on it as a bottomless source of whatever the fuck we want to take from it.

Even more braindead shit sorting out how to respond to what we have and are continuing to fuck up.

intra-species relations This covers a lot more stupid shit.

racism and misogyny
nationalism
fascism
inequality
wealth obsession
nuclear weapons
nuclear energy
perhaps, genetic modification

Man, the list could go on and on.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by dpfarr

I just said that modern life prohibits the need of phenotype per climate. I don’t doubt that there’s a single genetic issue that is responsible. Having more surface area available to synthesize in a 30-40° land area are different than equatorial. If we’re still in my hypothetical of less healthy people based on melanoma or the issues of D deficiency, that is a sexual selection pressure (or it should be).

Did you mean melanin and not melanoma?

Well, the brown is because brown is a mix of white, black and brown people. Some traits are dominant like brown eyes over blue eyes or short eyelashes over long eyelashes, but skin tone isn't. It is like height; it is a timer gene for the amount of pigment in the skin. In that way, people tend to inherit a mixture of timers for skin tone. Most kids from interracial couples are between the two.

Now, from another perspective, the population that is expected to grow the largest is the poorest populations because they have the largest family size, so this is why African nations are projected to grow the most. In that sense, the demographics of the world will likely change a lot in a thousand years. We may be far darker on average in the future. It depends on a lot of factors subject to change.



As to the Vitamin D, could you point in a bar to the girl with the lowest Vitamin D? I doubt Vitamin D plays a role in sexual selection. Like, there are studies showing height is correlated with success, and women sexually select for tall guys over men who have traditional traits that women appeal to, these being: power, wealth and stature (in society). This is a peacock type effect. Tallness could be a subconscious primal trait that imparts a feeling of security and protection, something that is a remnant from our caveman days or before that, but it could be societal too, or it could be something else. Back to the point: I don't think there are any studies correlating Vitamin D deficiency to success or something perceivable. I don't think black men in Alaska or Sweden are struggling to find a date because they might be Vitamin D deficient more often than paler men. Alternatively, having a Vitamin D deficiency could lead to a behavioral change that leads to someone procreating more or procreating recklessly: 'I'm getting the seasonal blues, so I'll hit up Tinder for a pick-me-up.' We can't infer much. At best we can guess and then if science does shed light on the subject, we could have some type of hindsight bias that we knew the answer all along, but we were only making an educated guess. And if anything, based on the popularity of tanning booths and spray tans, and the makeup on our last president, people seem to have a preference to add more pigment to their skin.

[NoHaveMSG]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

As to the Vitamin D, could you point in a bar to the girl with the lowest Vitamin D?

[Capt Spaulding]

On the Covid front, a buddy and I drove down to Boca Chica on Monday to check out the SpaceX operation. On the way down we stopped at a good seafood restaurant to grab some shrimp, scallops, and oysters. The place was mostly empty with the exception of the staff. About half of them were masked, about half not.

This morning I get a text from him saying he's not feeling well - headache, body aches, no appetite, chills. About noon he texts again, he's grabbed a home covid test and his first attempt came back positive. He hadn't done the second test yet so that jury is still out.

He's been hyper-cautious since the pandemic started and is convinced the only place he could have been exposed is the restaurant. The staff were all 20 somethings of unknown vax status. There were two other tables occupied, the closest was about 30 feet from us. If 1) he does have Covid, and 2) he got it there, it is far more contagious than any other respiratory bug I have ever seen. The guy that waited on us was masked as were we when not eating/drinking.

So far, I'm feeling fine. But one thing stands out; if he has it, the unvaxed in the population may well be truly screwed.

[NoHaveMSG]

We go back to masks tomorrow in indoor public places.

On a personal note. One of my buddies who is quite anti covid vax was in close contact with someone who tested positive today. Now he is worried about getting it.

[Capt Spaulding]

Delta does NOT seem to play nice.

[Ultramaroon]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

So far, I'm feeling fine. But one thing stands out; if he has it, the unvaxed in the population may well be truly screwed.

I ask to verify only because you didn't mention it. Was he vaxed? I'm sorry for him. We're going through the decision process with our grandkids and the upcoming school year. I'm afraid that it will be a shit show.

A group of four former colleagues and I met for dinner last Thursday. We are all vaccinated but the restaurant was pretty damn busy. I remain conflicted about how to proceed in this environment. It's all terribly disheartening.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Capt Spaulding

Hmmmm. Well, how about almost everything we as a fucking species do?

Name your subject area.

Environment (lots of braindead shit here)

treating the planet and all life on it as a bottomless source of whatever the fuck we want to take from it.

Even more braindead shit sorting out how to respond to what we have and are continuing to fuck up.

intra-species relations This covers a lot more stupid shit.

racism and misogyny
nationalism
fascism
inequality
wealth obsession
nuclear weapons
nuclear energy
perhaps, genetic modification

Man, the list could go on and on.

I don't know. I'm trying to imagine a time when a caveman first made the wheel and didn't have the emotional intelligence to imagine what harm it could cause or if it was wise to make a wheel, given the ramifications and current predicament of it rolling down a hill into other cavemen.

If the point is that we lack the emotional intelligence to separate our primal desires of wanting power, wealth, stature, procreation, pleasure, etc with what we know to be good for others or what we know to be better for our future selves and our offspring then yes, this is true. Our biology still favors ourselves over others (until we have children), and it favors now or our immediate needs over the needs we might have sometime in the future.

If the point is that our creations have always been made hastily (without emotional intelligence), so they are bound to destroy us as they get bigger and grow larger. I suppose this could be true. Obviously, we could kill each other with nuclear weapons, but we use more primitive or precise weapons because we have the emotional intelligence to see that fighting with nuclear weapons is not in our best interest. We are seeing a lot of problems related to our population size. This isn't tied to our technology, necessarily, as we could have reached this population with 1800's technology or less. Our ability to cope with these changes might be more related to the frog in the boiling water experiment, if you are familiar. This is to say, we lack the ability to see the danger. It might be less about emotional intelligence and more about having the correct information. There is definitely a component of emotional intelligence that is needed to feel more connected to a community or the world than to ones immediate needs or their immediate offspring.

Irregardless, I believe we are progressing, and AI will either destroy us, or it will be the greatest tool for teasing apart these moral and political issues that, as you put it, put our emotional intelligence at odds with our technology. I suppose we have shown that we can move past certain things like the use of nuclear weapons. I don't see why we can't move past other issues too. Maybe this is more to your point: the question is whether we can solve the problems before we allow them to destroy us. If that is your point then it is a fair point. I'm an optimist, and I hope that when we reach the precipice, there is the opportunity to turn it around.

[Capt Spaulding]

Originally Posted by Ultramaroon

I ask to verify only because you didn't mention it. Was he vaxed? I'm sorry for him. We're going through the decision process with our grandkids and the upcoming school year. I'm afraid that it will be a shit show.

A group of four former colleagues and I met for dinner last Thursday. We are all vaccinated but the restaurant was pretty damn busy. I remain conflicted about how to proceed in this environment. It's all terribly disheartening.

Yes, he had a second dose of Phizer sometime in April. My wife and got the second modera jabs in mid March.

I got a text a few minutes ago. He’s at the Dr: I guess we’ll see pretty soon.