Some very interesting thoughts there. I agree with the gist of your views. Have you read any books in developing these thoughts? If so, what can you recommend?
Right. One scenario could be: escaped from the lab with a technician who visited the wet market on the way home from work, sparking the first identifiable cluster.
I would say it matters for future considerations. Gain of function research is happening in many places. Leaks can happen. An unrelated virus could cause another pandemic if there are flaws that go unaddressed. The probability of a pandemic occurring doesn't decrease because this one has occurred, as they are independent events. For all we know, another pandemic could be brewing and we're so occupied with COVID19 that we're not observing it.
My wife is a researcher and says she can often guess who the authors are when she performs reviews because it's her domain and their references and context tend to give it away. But it's still a guess because the review process is blind. I'm pretty sure it's just the journal's editorial staff that can see who's who. It's not perfect, but it's not as blatantly biased by 'brand name' stature the way you suggest.
"Everyone" is a strong word. I'd wager you could find impressive achievements by quite a few business people with Imposter Syndrome. Believing you can succeed isn't necessary, or Imposter Syndrome wouldn't be a thing.
I've been thinking about this issue of unknown, unacknowledged, or perhaps subconscious religion a lot lately. I grew up religious but am now an atheist, and though I haven't sought to replace it component-wise, I've been observing de facto beliefs in myself and others that wouldn't normally be recognized as such because they aren't packaged as a lot. What makes me note similarities between acknowledged religious beliefs and unacknowledged ones is their function. If you look at the desired effects, they have the same aim: guidance in making decisions, association with a group sharing a particular view, value judgments both aesthetic and moral. The religions we created are a reflection of our psychology and physiology, and often the tensions between those two. It seems to me at least that a name brand religion often fills a life module that's required for a human to operate. The fact that it might be unlabeled might make it more difficult to identify, but it doesn't nullify its existence.
I agree. I think there's such an interest in seeing the genius behind a work which actually involves the collaboration of a group to actually succeed. Just like in team sports. There are great players who are great because they won a lot of championships, had high scoring totals, etc. But in most cases, they also had the best teams. The genius lifts their collaborators up and the inverse is also true. I wonder sometimes about great players in my favorite sport and have doubts about the career outcomes of some of their peers that seems to have a lot to do with how good their teams were, as well as how fortunate they were to avoid injury, etc. There are analogies to those factors as well in business, but they don't garner as much fascination as the idea that there's one person who really makes the thing go.
I had some symptoms in mid-March as well, and actually on my birthday noticed I couldn't smell or taste nearly as well as normal. It was very apparent because I work as a barista, so naturally I rely on my sense of smell quite a lot, and I had really enjoyed the same green tea the day before and the day of my smell loss; it just tasted incredibly flat. My birthday meal and birthday wine were just a waste on me. My wife and I were tested for antibodies about 6 weeks later, when our son was born, and neither of us was found to have antibodies. It wasn't until around the first week of April that I first heard loss of your sense of smell was a symptom of COVID19. In spite of the antibody test, I suspect I had the virus. About how quickly does the antibody count drop if you develop specific antibodies to COVID19? I read somewhere that some people recovered from their infections without developing antibodies tailored to COVID19 and it was thought that these individuals overcame the virus due to their body's already existing store of antibodies for other types of Corona virus. I can't remember where I read that article now.
Pretty much every country has it. Khrushchev implemented their mass deployment in the Soviet Union to stem a housing crisis (I think maybe even as one of his earliest actions as chairman...it's been a while since I read about it in an architecture magazine). Once you recognize the form, you see it everywhere, even outside the Soviet bloc; in the US, Canada, etc. The political influence makes their prominence within the urban fabric rise or fall, but the idea behind the building form is pretty much the same: cheap housing for an increasingly urban population without regard to street life, scale, etc., very much in the vein of Corbusier's Cité radieuse. I suspect the economic argument of that kind of construction was hard to argue with at the time.
A researcher I know says it's because the publication date corresponds to the release date of the issue of the journal the article is being published in, though it's common articles are e-published ahead of the journal issue's publication date.
> I don't think I'd want to be ultra-wealthy (as in a billionaire+). At that point you're almost removed from society. I imagine you end up moving in circles with other ultra-wealthy people that are actually quite small. You risk being a target of the desperate, the criminally minded (fraud, kidnapping, blackmail, that sort of thing) and the mentally unstable.
That's been the reality of Denmark's richest family (richest ever since CF Møller, head of Mærsk, died a few years ago). They've had numerous run-ins with people after a slice of their wealth. This lead them to keep as far from the public eye as possible (according to one piece I read) until they were the most talked about Danes of the season last year, as they tragically lost 3 of their 4 children in a bombing that was aimed to wipe them out.
It's hard to imagine a worse scenario to survive as a parent or sibling.
It's illegal in Denmark to have your face covered. There are a few exceptions, but I don't think "I don't want my face identified" would fly. It seems to go directly against the intention of the law: https://apnews.com/9e5f787cdcc94c0c83210dbf275b715f/Danish-b...
Just to point out, Copenhagen isn't (entirely) located on Amager, as the article suggests. Part of it is, but that's only a couple of neighborhoods in the city which is composed of 8-ish distinct areas. Copenhagen is located entirely on Sjælland, but calling it Sjælland Bakke wouldn't make sense in the local context.
That's a puzzling take. I see where you went with it, but I'm inclined to think of writing as already including the recipient. Such as when I write notes for myself. Often, I'm keen to do this in instances where I find a thought worthwhile but also quite subtle or nuanced and therefore forgettable. Sometimes, when I reread these notes quite a while later, I'm surprised at what was occurring to me at the time and happy, sad, amused, or even befuddled at what was going on in my head at that moment. My rereadings are also colored by the context shifts you mention. But in those instances where I didn't succeed in conveying my meaning in a way I can reconnect with later, I don't think I'd consider that note not language, but rather a use of language that failed. It's still language. Even if its communication value is less than desired, it's a message built with the same tools as the messages that do work and pass your communication test. The fact that the intended future reader is there in the mind of the writer makes me think of it as language even before it's read, if it ever is. Otherwise, what is a written message that isn't read? It exists, but as what? How would you characterize it?