I used to work on a static analyzer that did taint analysis, model checking, buffer bounds checking, and so on -- a bit like a compiler backend on steroids. If there's a specific topic you'd like an explanation on, I could be convinced to write something up.
My favorite was always context-sensitive, interprocedural points-to analysis. And dataflow analysis in the presence of higher-order controlflow constructs.
> How do you convince someone like this that universal healthcare is better for all of us?
Here is one approach.
1) Enumerate the different options.
2) For each option, enumerate the upsides versus the downsides, which includes cost of implementation and operations, along with their likelihoods. Every option has potential downsides -- are we willing to accept them for the potential upsides?
3) Rank the options by expected utility. Which one comes out on top?
Ironically, you may find that universal healthcare is not the top-ranking option or that we have not yet come up with a high-expected-utility option.
> even if one source is factual and the Daily Stormer is…
I think it's disingenuous to use the Daily Stormer here as an example. I have definitely come across publications on the left that play loose with the facts or have unlikely explanations for directly observable facts.
It would be more fair to use something like PragerU:
Ah, right: "My peak concentration is usually right before break and after break it's generally gone."
One thing I do is, before I take a break, I dump my current notes, as well as things I'd like to do, into a Google Doc. When I return from my break, I take the time to read the notes, which loads pertinent facts back into working memory and gets me back into it.
Another practice that helps is that I let a fine-grained todo list guide me during work. I make sure to explicitly mark what I am currently working on. If I get distracted, it is straightforward to remind myself what I was doing, and once I am done with it, I know exactly what I should be doing next.
Here is an excerpt I think you might find useful: "This tip has had the greatest benefit to my effectiveness: When you want to work on a task (e.g., from your to-do list), get your mind to enter a specific 'mode' where it only knows how to do that task. Forget everything else. Remain fixed in that mode until you get tired and have to "break character". Then move onto the next task and repeat."
I think it addresses: "Tasks take way longer to complete with forced breaks, especially if the breaks are longer."
I was there myself. It turned out to be undiagnosed sleep apnea. I agree with everyone here who says to see a doctor as one of the first things you do.
23:10: "Cancer is not one specific disease. Cancer is actually many diseases put together. In fact, cancer is many rare diseases -- if you take cancer to the limit, it's likely the case that the same cancer has never occurred twice.
"If you look at the genetic footprint of cancer, even within the same patient -- as I'll explain in just a moment -- you get very different cancers from the same originating source. And I'll explain why that is. That's why this sort of very information-driven approach to curing cancer is absolutely critical."
26:29: "... the genome has syntax. And in fact, it has a semantics. And beyond that, it has an instruction set too."
30:00: "So when you're fighting cancer, you're fighting evolution itself inside your own body."
1) Turns out there are a bunch of volcanoes, 91, underneath the west Antarctic ice sheet that we previously didn't know about. In fact:
(Excerpts are placed between square brackets.)
["We were amazed," Bingham said. "We had not expected to find anything like that number. We have almost trebled the number of volcanoes known to exist in west Antarctica. We also suspect there are even more on the bed of the sea that lies under the Ross ice shelf, so that I think it is very likely this region will turn out to be the densest region of volcanoes in the world, greater even than east Africa, where mounts Nyiragongo, Kilimanjaro, Longonot and all the other active volcanoes are concentrated."]
2) Furthermore, eruptions would cause the ice sheet to melt:
[“Anything that causes the melting of ice – which an eruption certainly would – is likely to speed up the flow of ice into the sea.]
3) They could already be erupting and causing the ice to melt:
[“We just don’t know about how active these volcanoes have been in the past,” Bingham said.]
4) Also, consider this quote:
[If one erupts, it could further destabilise some of the region’s ice sheets, which have already been affected by global warming.]
I followed the link. The headline is:
[Although fracturing and surface melting on the Larsen C ice shelf might sound like indicators of climate change, these processes are natural]
The article links to a source, another article in the same paper, that actually contradicts the claim it is making. Another quote from the article:
[So, while ice fracturing and surface melting may sound like signs of climate change in action in Antarctica, they are really part of the background against which we must look for real change.]