I wouldn’t assume some any index from a magazine is the end all authority on what a nation state is.

I mean I can start my own magazine and create my own index however I want. Doesn’t mean it’s right.

Anyone can have a Wikipedia page? There is no hurdle.

Indeed. The Gulf states didn’t want to get involved in this war for fear of upsetting local groups, but after the attacks have now jumped on board.

Iran basically has no state allies in the Middle East. Russia and China don’t seem any more committed than just arms sales.

What potential problem is upsetting the ethnic Apple cart in the region. We know countries like Iraq are a mix of Sunni and Shia with Iran supporting the Shia side quite significantly.

If the main supporting of Shia in the region (Iran) gets wiped out, Shia in varies countries like Iraq may feel much more vulnerable and make political moves preemptively.

Oh come on. Saying “no” is not eroding trust, it’s taking a stand.

When the US banded human embryo research did that erode trust? I didn’t hear anything about that at the time.

Don't you know enforcing whats best for your citizens clearly erodes trust? Just keep selling off your future for short term gains! Anything else is heckin problematic :(

I’m going to doubt your claim. Texas alone has a similar number people employed in manufacturing as CA.

How CA can manufacture more when you add all the other SE states?

And your statement is like saying “sure the food has poison in it, but people just tough it out and don’t whine”

How about not poising food? Seems like a worthy goal.

I worked at a plant and the answer is yes. The EPA requires it.

It can range from overflow tanks to capture spills to concrete “pools” around the entire operation that capture any catastrophic leaks and direct it to underground holding tanks.

There are a ton of highly toxic industrial processes. Properly designed plants and safety infrastructure means it’s never an issue.

The original Terminator movie doesn’t seem so far fetched now (minus the time travel).

94.5% is actually terrible.

If you have a prevalence of 10 in 1000, how do the numbers shake out?

Well, you test all 1,000. If we assume a 95% accuracy for false-positive and false negatives?

Of the 990 that you test that don't have the disease, the test will false state 50 do have the disease. Yikes!

And of the 10 that do have the disease? You'll miss 1 of them.

This improves the diagnostic accuracy from around 75% to 95%.

It's not terrible. This is a relatively good number. Diagnostics is just terribly difficult.

I got bad news about the specificity for most things this serious. Think the only one we absolutely nail is infectious disease detection.

Spoilers: It's anywhere between 1-15 and 5-30% for false positives and 1-15/5-40 for false negatives. That's imaging, biomarkers, cancer screenings, etc

Like, where do you think the concept of "second opinions" came from? Whimsy? Lets go ask a second doctor if I actually have cancer, it'll be fun!

> 94.5% is actually terrible.

This statement is quite broad and misses several important factors.

First of all, a test's sensitivity and specificity. The math in your example assumes a balanced test, but on what basis? The math comes out quite different for high-sensitivity or high-specificity tests. (Unfortunately, I could not find the numbers for the test in the linked article.)

Secondly, whom are we testing? The prevalence rate in your example (1%) is unrealistically low even for the general population. But would we screen the general population? No, we'd screen high-risk groups: the elderly, those with certain APOE genotypes etc. Predictive values of a test depend hugely on the prevalence rate.

Lastly, it depends on how the results are used. If it's a high-sensitivity test used to decide whom to send to the next tier in a multi-tier diagnostic system, it could actually be quite effective at that (very rarely missing the disease while greatly reducing the need for more expensive or more invasive testing).

Huh? Voice of America is a basically a government organization blasting out US propaganda.

The president runs VOA, it's not some separate entity he decided to censor.

I find it hilarious when people who are pro censorship bring up Karl Popper and the Paradox of Tolerance.

You can tell they've never read his work because his conclusion in the end is that you should tolerate intolerance up and until it promotes specific violence.

So total freedom of speech up and until it starts inciting violence. It's basically the same stance the US Constitution has.

> Censoring foreign political influence and misinformation campaigns is just sane policy.

That would be true if there were objective definitions of "foreign political influence" and "misinformation campaigns".

But there isn't. One can wave their hands and say any information falls into those categories.

What rubbish. A foreign bad actor declares they specifically want to feed your people propaganda through a specific communication channel. Do you need more than two brain cells to decide whether that's an influence campaign?

What is rubbish is your inability to see the subjectivity in “bad actor” and “influence campaign”.

I can wave my hand and make that claim about anything.

“Oh those evil Americans and their influence campaign on free speech rights!”