removing/reducing

The kids still have exposure, but the total load is reduced allowing the body to see and react to the infectious elements without being overwhelmed. All of the “but it’s nature” fanatics should remember that the million years of evolution we have survived with exposure was done without enclosed, poorly ventilated boxes. And within the historical record, the some of the greatest failures of our “natural” immune system prior to vaccines and antibiotics have generally occurred when we enclosed people into poorly ventilated, densely packed communities. (though many failures come from drinking our own poo…usually due to densely packed populations with unregulated water standards/supplies)

While this is certainly an interesting thing to know, there was no quantitative data provided about the discoveries. While a bunch of rare earth metals wandering around the atmosphere is certainly not a common occurrence, knowing whether we’re talking about parts per billion or parts or parts per undecillion is a substantial difference (if Google didn’t just lie to me, there are around one quattuordecillion molecules in our atmosphere, probably give or take a couple orders of magnitude).

I guarantee I can “drop” more than 120g after a cup of morning coffee. Checkmate scientists.

That’s probably the most uplifting part about the award - such amazing persistence.

The whole idea the internet is interlinked sites. Then again the whole idea if the internet was also a robust, reliable, multi-nodal, non-corporate architecture for redundant transmission of data, so we’re headed into the shitter already.

But, more to the point, if you start charging people for links you break the purpose of being able to link things. It will kill Canadian journalism first, but it will wound a portion of the internet in the process. And if it spreads it will do net harm to both sides, everywhere.

Quick point of clarification - concrete is about 40% sand. PortlandPortland cement is one of the other parts of concrete - it’s what actually holds concrete together. Other pozzolons, like fly ash, can make up 25-50% of the cementitious material.

FWIW, Cement is wildly energy intensive to create and produces a huge amount of CO2. We don’t have a lot of replacement options for cement (or concrete generally) because of its unique durability.

Story time: My daughter got it near the end of finals week at university, and my wife and I drove her home - 5 hours is a closed up car - on what was probably her first symptomatic day. None of us were masked because none of us knew. She coughed once or twice, but mostly slept on the way home (as she usually does after a week of exams). I almost joked with her after one cough that she’d caught the 'vid. Next morning she woke up with a fever and tested, not actually expecting…positive. She quarantined in her room for 5 days, and all three of us pretty much didn’t go out for 10 days and we delayed holiday celebrations with the grandparents for two weeks. Neither my wife nor I were ever symptomatic. We used the two remaining tests we had on day 3 after the car ride and both tested negative, but decided the full quarantine was still safest.

Thinking back to the early New York outbreak, I remember reading an article in (April? May?) that semi-random population testing (I say semi because it was voluntary) for serum antibodies that covered multiple counties showed that around half of the people who tested positive for past Covid exposure had indicated that they had not suffered any symptoms of illness in the prior 3 months. The supposition was that up to 50% of the population had experienced an infection asymptomatically. While odd, it possibly explained why the spread was so rapid - people who were asymptomatic may have simply been vectors to infect many others as they didn’t quarantine (or, likely, mask since masks were in very short supply at the time). Regardless, I’m getting an XBB.1.5 vaccine when it’s released. Whether I got it or it magically missed me the first time, I have no desire to join the symptomatic club.

Their financials are quite interesting. They make basically most of their money on memberships. Or, to put it another way, the price of items in the store is roughly equal to the cost of goods plus their distribution and overhead.