Many of my friends have gone through IVF and still I was surprised by some weird parts of the story.
For example: "I was stabbed with 932 needles" and when you tap you find out "because I wanted to improve my odds, I went to 31 acupuncture appointments, where 687 needles pierced my underbelly, legs and head".
It is clearly established that acupuncture is placebo, but beyond whether this placebo might actually improve the odds (highly disputed), it is an elective alternative procedure with unclear benefit, not part of a standard IVF journey.
I understand the story is a very personal one, but it would be good to remember it isn't necessarily representative of most people's experience.
It might very well be placebo but it helped me deeply and I can see why women that want to give it their all would try it (and that's why I don't begrudge her counting those jabs).
If it helps anyone - my first cycle was without acupuncture and I barely got 4 eggs out of it. I underwent acupuncture for 3 months before my second cycle and that got me 12 eggs.
When each cycle costs about 30k USD, a lot of women with low amh, egg quality or ovarian reserve would try anything to help tweak the odds!
The "try anything to help" argument drives me batty. How do you know acupuncture doesn't hurt your odds? For every quack treatment somebody is trying to sell you, we could come up with a million other quack treatments (rub cat fur in your eyes twice daily to improve ovulation) that you're not trying. Random unproven nonsense is as likely to hurt as it is to help. Actually, given that it's so much easier to disrupt systems than it is to improve them, random unproven nonsense is far more likely to hurt than it is to help.
Yeah, they are preying on people who a vulnerable and going through a difficult phase...
And always this sentence: I know someone who this worked with! You can always find someone where something "worked". Started smoking? Bet you find someone where it worked.. started drinking alcohol? Bet you find someone where it worked... Etc.
The total number might be a little out there due to her non-medical treatments, but the general sentiment is accurate for IVF. My wife filled up an entire sharps box with the injections she needed to take and that was with success on the first try of the first round (which is very rare).
As someone who is a bit squeamish around needles, I don't know if I could have done what she did.
> that was with success on the first try of the first round (which is very rare).
This very much depends on the patient history (age, cause of infertility, …) and the clinic. Live births per intended retrieval can vary from 10%-60% conditional on the above.
In our case, it was suggested that the first transfer of the first cycle had a 15% chance of success. Whether that's "very rare" is perhaps a matter of perspective. It was low enough we assumed it would be a failure and we were surprised when it succeeded, but to a doctor it's a frequent occurrence.
Actually acupuncture has some studied physiological effects. One is nervous system mediated via the release of endorphins and then a later regulatory rebound which can have an anti inflammatory effect. I think low dose naltrexone has a somewhat similar method of action. I might have the details a bit off but the studies definitely exist if you want to research it. There are even some compounds in coffee (some of the bitter compounds not the caffeine) that have a very mild effect that works in a similar way.
Personally I’m not a fan of acupuncture and I suspect any nervous system benefits from acupuncture would be far outweighed from those of regular exercise. But maybe for people with chronic pain or other issues it could be useful.
In yet another great cosmic irony, one of the things that is notorious for making it difficult for a woman to get pregnant is the stress of trying to get pregnant.
Placebo or not, anything which reduces the stress of the mother-to-be can be extremely helpful.
For a multiple IVF treatment case (a fancy hospital might have 40% cycle to birth rate remember) it would not be unusual to have ~100 actual injections.
There are many houses in Poland that are using coal heating, and unfortunately a lot of people burn there their thrash. Kraków is surrounded by smaller towns and villages, where single family houses are common. To make things even worse, Kraków is in a basin, which makes the air flow even more difficult. If you add there years of city mismanagement when it comes to air flow, you land in such a situation
"Krakow’s pollution stems from a mix of local and regional sources. A primary culprit is domestic heating, the burning of coal and wood in older, inefficient household boilers and stoves remains widespread in the Małopolska region (1).
Car traffic also adds nitrogen oxides and fine particulates, exacerbated by an ageing vehicle fleet. Topography and meteorology worsen the problem, Krakow sits in a basin-like region prone to temperature inversions and limited ventilation, allowing pollutants to accumulate.
Additionally, emissions drift in from surrounding municipalities and industrial zones, making regional coordination crucial to air quality. Despite a solid-fuel ban in the city since 2019 and the replacement of many coal boilers, compliance is uneven and some residents still use banned fuel."
I think it’s topology (concave) + widespread poor heating methods in the agglomeration + a very bad day + inefficient combustion engines.
I’d maybe include accurate measurements. The government isn’t trying to hide that and doesn’t have the means to, and highly quality sensors are widespread.
I am Polish and I don't see any racism in the previous comment because it was just a statement of the fact (disputable at best). I see some in yours, because you seem to suggest that race is somehow involved in what we are talking about.
LOL, there is nothing racist about it, neither Poland nor Czechia are really into environmental enforcement against individuals, and you can definitely smell it in winter. As of now, "small sources of pollution" (e.g. mostly individual homes) are at least comparable to industry when it comes to releasing bad stuff into the air.
I hate the acrid smell of burning plastic, but no one will do anything about it.
It's the same in Latvia. Riga wants to set up a zero-emissions zone and a toll to enter the city center, but won't ban open stoves or solid fuel burning, which pollutes much more than cars in winter.
Kraków just set up a clean transport zone; it went into full effect just few weeks ago. And people just can't shut up whining about it, even though it doesn't really put much burden on ~anyone. Most people drive petrol-powered cars (usually converted to support LPG, too), and the minimal norms for the clean transport zone are so low, it's hard to find a car that doesn't meet it. You can buy a used petrol-powered car with pocket change and it would already meet the norms.
Those are useful, but not very effective usually as no one controls it after a few months, unless you set up a costly and complex certification and licence-plate monitoring system.
Despite government incentives and regulations some people burn garbage in stows. It's a local cultural thing and the state seemingly is powerless to do anything about it despite being the 20th economy in the world.
Freezing to death is even more terrible for their health. It's also much more immediate. And so is being poor.
Breathing dust and smoke is a minor inconvenience in comparison. Any negative health effects will become noticeable in decades if at all. Doesn't help that most of the people responsible likely remember themselves or their parents breathing even worse stuff most their lives, with no ill effect being seen.
Hell, it's one reason I myself considered air quality issues to be overblown - I don't perceive smog. I couldn't tell you whether it's bad or good air day in Kraków - I could only tell you when the air is too clean because I get sore throat then. I no longer consider air quality to be an overblown fad, but that's because I have small children and they start coughing non-stop when the air gets bad.
I understand keeping warm, but the idea of burning garbage seems like there could have been many steps to avoid that. Raiding nearby forests. Finding scrap wood. Informal charcoal industry. I guess the trash is "free" and "effortless" but I don't understand how the smell alone doesn't put people off. I guess it has been going on so long to be normalized.
It's not just poverty, but education about pollution and a common view in the post-communist countries that the common good (clean air in this case) isn't so important. It's the same with things like noise or graffitis for instance.
In Latvia you commonly see rich people with BMW SUVs behaving like this. My friends see no problem with having coal barbecue or very heavy music in the center of Riga. We often have to remind new tenants in our building the benefits of sorting waste - and they are not poor.
I wonder why post communist countries lagged behind so much in this regard? Seems like this awareness only really hit the US in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s, well after the iron curtain came down. I guess mass media must have been still siloed by language and there might not have been much english language media presence by that point sharing these ideas.
You are right in the language silo, many of those countries have also small populations, which means fewer content to consume, and a certain intellectual insularity.
Out of curiosity, why would you burn your trash, and especially plastics? It smells and is clearly unhealthy and the caloric content is worthless compared to wood.
Several garages near my house have people living in them, and they burn anything that burns -- plastic bottles, pieces of used tires, rags soaked in used motor oil. I'm pissed as hell at them, but the country is already poor, and they have even less.
Old/low quality stoves leak a lot of emissions in the house, but people don't realize it. Also, smoke finds its way back in the house quite easily. Sad that such extreme tragedy of the commons still happens.
I'd suspect just small amount of datapoints with maybe bias for people installing air sensors because that particular area's air quality is bad for whatever reason (near to road, neighbour have old coal boiler etc.)
There isn't much wind there at all so the pollution can't escape. I'm not saying this isn't the residents' fault, but it isn't entirely the residents' fault.
During covid, when car traffic went to almost 0, the air quality was also extremely bad. Its mostly coal in the houses plus some people are not even using coal in their heating systems
Assuming a large contributing factor is all the coal plants now running to sustain Germany's independence from nuclear? Berlin's air quality has also tanked a lot since the energy crisis started.
Why would you jump to this conclusion? I wonder why some people on internet are repeating narratives like drones.
Poland has largest use of coal in EU. Czechia and Germany are behind. Poland is including energy from sun and wind now a lot but there is still long way. Unlike surrounding countries they never had nuclear for some reason.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/PL/live/
Sulfur can counteract warming (although not the carbon dioxide itself obviously). There was a brief period, right before the world stepped back from releasing sulfur into the atmosphere, when our carbon dioxide emissions were completely countered by our sulfur emissions, when it comes to global temperatures only.
But coal and lignite power production in TWh in Germany went down over the last decades? [0] Are you saying Germany is importing form Poland who is using goal power plants?
Nuclear is one of the cleanest sources of power, if not the cleanest period.
It requires least mining and materials over lifecycle vs any alternative per KWh. It requires least land. It's final waste volume is similar to renewables while both sectors do create toxic waste that must be stored forever (used fuel in case of nuclear and forever toxic chemicals like arsenic/lead in case of renewables)
Saying nuclear is dirty as hell means you either are ill informed or spreading lies on purpose
To give an example with Germany, probably being outpaced only by Austria in hate for nuclear power. Germans are concerned about small amounts of nuclear waste that will be stored in deep geo stable facilities (just like onkalo, soon fosmark, terradura and alikes) but germans are perfectly fine having the biggest near surface facility for storing forever toxic and dangerous chemicals on the planet, Herfa Neurode.
Not just that, many are unaware that having a repository longterm is still a must even if they don't have nuclear power at all, due to medical and research sectors
Those guys in nirs are clearly some wannabe antinuclear influencers which are concerned about nuclear supply chain and it's overall impact but are fine with ren supply chain with even bigger impact. They seem to be concerned about CO2 impact of nuclear due to concrete but fail to mention lifecycle data per kwh as in links I've provided. They are concerned about radioactive waste but not concerned about other toxic chemicals like arsenic. They are concerned about tritium when it's a low level emitter which you can drink and occurs naturally due to the sun. Most releases of tritium, including in Fukushima are below WHO limits.
They are even concerned about some french units going offline during summer due to heat, but fail to mention even then France is top net exporter on the continent, avg heat impact affecting about 0.18% of production per year. They also fail to mention this is happening in units without cooling towers and edf isn't fixing it precisely because there's no financial value- France is exporting like crazy in this period - can check the data this summer on energy charts for confirmation. The 'article' is written in a childish manner by someone cherry picking everything to confirm own bias
I heavily recommend you to look at this topic pragmatically instead of listening to some influencers like in your link or even greenpeace which did even more damage to the environment. Germany now is suffering due to such antinuclear movements. Not only more people died due to coal still being used, but existing nuclear fleet was cheapest firm power on the grid based on merit order data, while receiving significantly less subsidies than renewables. In fact, per official bundestag inquiry and later a parliament inquiry in Bavaria, nuclear in Germany didn't receive special subsidies for production at all, unlike renewables with EEG, which alone already outpaced the cost of all french nuclear fleet
And naming me a polluter just confirms your bias and unwillingness to be informed about the topic, only to attach labels to people with different point of view
I hope I am not wrong, but there is so much music out there already that success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist.
If there is no artist I don't see how any strong following could be built. (Obviously AI will carve easily into elevator music etc.)
Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
> Who will ever look up a song and favourite it on Spotify if there are no humans behind it?
"Obscurest Vinyl" has 249,608 monthly listeners on Spotify. No one is interested in the humans behind their hit "I Glued My Balls To My Butthole Again".
People like me who mostly take songs at face value, valuing them by music and lyrics, and don't really care about who wrote or performed them, much less what else they're up to in their lives?
That said, the quantity of music is in itself a problem. Half the value of art is in experiencing the same thing as others. It's going to get even harder with cheap generative art. The better it is, the worse the situation gets.
Personally 3/4 times I'll put my big Spotify playlist on random or play a Spotify curated playlist. Certainly there is scope there for Spotify to select songs based on their licensing costs.
I've certainly had a hunch that certain songs get much more frequent rotation than others on my liked songs playlist (although I appreciate humans are notorious for picking out patterns where there are none!)
I rather think that makes them examples on point, specifically on the point that:
> success today is not about the quality of the music but instead about the audience's connection with the artist
...although I would rather say "sense of connection", since in all three of these cases there is in the narrow sense no "artist" involved at all.
More broadly, this seems a fairly uncontroversial point, given how crowded by supply our current media markets are made. Certainly it seems like it would be uncontroversial on that supply side, at least if what I hear from artists and writers and musicians in my circles is any guide.
As an anecdotal statement, I do not want a connection or care about the artist. I also don't connect (or want to) with directors, writers,
actors etc in TV shows and movies I view.
Music is just another consumable form of entertainment for me, and if I like the song I don't care who made it.
A while back there was an article circling about how Spotify has their own contract musicians and how they are pushing "fake" bands made up of these musicians in their playlists. Same reason. With AI they don't even need those musicians.
Most musicians I know would love one of these Spotify jobs. Writing and recording for a salary, rather than spending 75% your time on (mostly futile) promotion for a wildly unpredictable return?
Super interesting! I've been wanting to use Google calendar to also track daily habits and they time they take but it's super clunky for that with too much manual effort.
Your interface might just be what I'm after, will check it out :)
My mother fell for exactly this scam, thankfully was able to cancel the transaction just in time and gave evidence to the police. Funny to see on HN something that touches one so close.
The most fascinating thing here is the lack of sophistication of the approach. No fake images or audio or anything.
I'm worried about the new wave of impersonation scams that's coming thanks to voice cloning.
I wish there was more promotion of the simple way to protect yourself from most scams - if someone initiates contact with you, contact them back through a channel you found independently in a way you already trust. My bank keeps warning me of scams and has a list of ways to protect yourself, but they're stupid things like check if the message is from a mobile number, and does it sound too good to be true? They don't mention the more robust and simple technique of calling back using the number on the back of your bank card. This will nip voice impersonation scams in the bud too.
I hired a lawyer who did advise that. Telling me not to pay any invoices they send me without first contacting them to confirm.
On the other hand, my doctor sends text messages asking for bills to be paid to an account number in the message itself. Training people to trust scam techniques!
I got a call once where the guy said he was from a bank. He said he wanted to verify who I was, so was going to ask me some personal details. I replied "you're the one calling me, how do I know you're really from the bank?".
He sounded amused by my reply, commented that my stance was quite uncommon, but I had made a fair point. He said I'd get a message via the bank's webapp, with a phone number where I could call him back.
It turned out that it was a legitimate call from the bank. But they clearly aren't training their customers to follow secure practices. The personal information that he was asking for is _exactly_ what a scammer would need to ask me too.
Exactly. They have the capability to push notification to the app to request you call them. They should do that BEFORE. And if they do outbound, immediately state were pushing a notification and you should call us back as we have something important to discuss.
I’ve had a similar experience except that the person was clearly irritated at my response. He cut the call and I was only able to confirm that the call was legitimate because I asked my relationship manager at the bank.
Tabby infers on the gpu and is slow, I can only imagine how slow truepilot is on the cpu.
If people want auto complete, it needs to be super fast. For slow inference, a better application would be a chatbot that reads your code and answers questions, like cody from sourcegraph.
Many of my friends have gone through IVF and still I was surprised by some weird parts of the story.
For example: "I was stabbed with 932 needles" and when you tap you find out "because I wanted to improve my odds, I went to 31 acupuncture appointments, where 687 needles pierced my underbelly, legs and head".
It is clearly established that acupuncture is placebo, but beyond whether this placebo might actually improve the odds (highly disputed), it is an elective alternative procedure with unclear benefit, not part of a standard IVF journey.
I understand the story is a very personal one, but it would be good to remember it isn't necessarily representative of most people's experience.