Like me or not, I am glad to hear about your milestone.

He seems frustrated but resigned. Not much he can do.

I have a friend that’s a professor at the University of Michigan. This tracks with what he relates. Less motivation and less competence, also more parental involvement, and UofM gets the pick of the litter.

Now the EU wants us to pay them $30k for EU Network Security Compliance certification.. Estimate to prepare the paperwork is 2-3 months.

No wonder there are no startups in Europe.

That’s one way to look at it, but I don’t think it’s particularly useful to look at it that way. 9/11 is a factor among many for sure. But demographic shifts, changes in media, etc., you can make all kinds of reductionist arguments, but why? Is there anything really gained from a simple narrative?

We won’t be doing it. I think we either ship before the deadline, or no EU. It’s absurd.

I love doubles tennis. It's fast-paced cooperative athletic chess.

I am working with a group making a mobile device that we are shipping this summer, and we put a big battery in it. The EU passed a rule last summer that goes into effect in June that we need to show that it will retain 80% of its max charge after 800 cycles if we want to sell in the EU. If we fast cycle-it, it can damage the battery, but running it down takes well more than a day. So maybe we can't sell in the EU for at least 2.2 years? Way to go EU... Oh, we also have to drop it on concrete from 1 meter 45 times without functional impairment. Yeah.

Well, a reasonable vax policy hasn't meant a reasonable food one thus far.

Or global warming. All the kids got fat because they stopped smoking too, I guess.

It's definitely complicated. RFK is overly skeptical of vaccines, and hopefully his influence there will be limited. I do think our food system is a travesty, however, and hope he makes some change there.

Oh I don't know.. Maybe less of this stuff:

No. My daughter is fully vaxed, and usually gets the flu vax. I don't think any available vaccinations cause autism. I don't think it's cover. I think he happens to be doing the right thing there.

My daughter usually gets the flu vax. She doesn't get the covid ones. I'm far from anti-vax or even "vax skeptical". The HPV one is an awesome new addition. I've heard antidotes of people getting slammed by the flu with or without vaccination, but the plural of antidote isn't data. I don't group all vaccines together and say "all vaccines are good/bad", because I have enough experience with biology to know that they aren't all the same thing. I've done some deep dives into the flu vax and it's almost certainly good for a given elderly individual but population-wide, it can look kinda meh if you look at rates and incidence across countries: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0163508 For a long while it seemed to help in some countries, but not help at all or have the opposite effect in others. Maybe the trivalent vaccines are improving things across the board. I'm not anti-flu vax, I am just not sure it's all that important for my daughter.

Most people don't seem to know that the J&J covid vax used a viral envelope that much of the population has some immunogenicity against. Nor do they know that the J&J vax was limited to one dose, not because of its superior effectiveness, but because the first dose would raise their immunogenicity such that the second dose would be ineffective and a greater risk of adverse reaction. Also, they can no longer benefit from vaccines or gene therapies that use such an envelope. I think that was a mistake. I also think it's a mistake that new covid vaccines are encouraged for age groups without clinical data showing a benefit for that group, particularly for mRNA-based vaccines.

There's a lot of money to be made on an annual vaccination, and IMO the US doesn't have the best record when it comes to putting our collective health first when there's lots of money to be made. But that doesn't mean I agree with RFK or think Jenny McCarthy isn't an idiot.

Does my healthy 12yo kid need a flu vaccine? I’m not saying I agree with RFK on vaccines, but it is a boondoggle. Kinda skeptical of anti-depressants that don’t perform better than placebo but the FDA approves them.

FDA has largely failed under the administration of reasonable people. This one move regarding shit in our food supply looks like a good one.

Thus my caveat.

Government sucks at building, because it’s both a player and referee, thus corruption. Much better working only as a referee, unless no one else wants to play at that price.

Dems might learn that you can't get an ought from an is, and that stated preference and revealed preference are often not the same. Both parties are in a very bad state.

I for one love a world where such fever dreams get so far that the market crushes them. We had VC-subsidized scooters for years.