nudge

I found 22 very relatable in general

Just watched it myself... Really good in all aspects; the animation, the score, the story are all top notch, and it also came out just at a right time as most of us could probably do with a nice subtle reminder to enjoy all little things in life... Some nice humour in there, too. “Don't worry, you can't crush a soul here, that's what life on Earth is for!" 8.5/10.

Staying with Canon or are you considering switching system?

I think the fact that MuZero learns without being given the rules by developing its own internal dynamic model of the environment and optimising within that model, and is also non-specific enough to teach itself new games is pretty neat though... Kind of similar to how we (humans) learn things without reading the rulebook first. Now, I agree with you that it's still more of a statistical model which mimics the most effective play, but while it might not be true AI, the progress reinforced learning has made in such a short period of time is still very impressive. Hopefully this will lead to it mastering more complex multi-agent games by demonstrating its understanding of causal connections between a multitude of different actions instead of relying on brute forcing solutions.

Beer thread: https://talkfootball365.com/topic/12707-beer/ Whisky thread: https://talkfootball365.com/topic/7961-whiskey/ Old thread on alcohol in general: https://talkfootball365.com/topic/50-alcohol-thread/

Well it is true, the question is, whether they will get away with it

Two RB Salzburg's players failed their doping test. Salzburg are blaming Mali's fooball association for giving the two players a drug containing a banned substance to combat altitude sickness, as Sekou Koita and Mohamed Camara tested positive after being away with the national team.

Now that's what I call a prison break!

This is a great write up.

Ribs for Christmas Eve.

That's a great idea, the chilli looks good too!

Is it those meal kits? Never used it myself. How does it work? I use a similar service from some local restaurants sometimes where they deliver you the ingredients for the meal of your choice along with the instructions. Usually do it when I want something like pho or proper ramen, as it is cheaper and more convenient than trying to find all the stuff in regular supermarkets...

Just to clarify - I'm not getting into the debate whether or not the UK government is using the information about the new variants as some sort of a political tool to keep people in check during the festive period; I have no clue about that nor is it a discussion I'm particularly interested in, haha. But it's probably worth noting that the new UK and South Africa variants didn't happen in a week - they've been catalogued in late September/early October, and it's very likely it's already spread throughout the world anyway. The UK is doing a fantastic job with sequencing, so it's no wonder they were the first one to find it; if other countries would be doing as much of it as the UK does, I bet it would have already been documented in more places around the world too. Regarding other more potent variants, there was one with the D614G mutation that suddenly started rising in March and became the most dominant one in Europe and then globally by the end of June. That variant also had a significantly higher transmissibility, but no change in pathogenicity; these two new variants appear to be very similar to the D614G one in that aspect. Interestingly enough, the mutations in that variant also made it more succeptible to neutralisation by antibodies, so there's hoping it will be the same case with the new ones as well.

To add to that, technically it's also not even a new strain, it's just another new variant - there's quite a big difference, and it's so annoying to see even some experts use the two terms indiscriminately. These two new variants have been catalogued in September/October already, and while it's definitely worth keeping an eye on them as they appear to have more mutations than usual so it's unknown what effect the combination of these mutations might have, at this point there's nothing to suggest that it has increased pathogenicity, and even the increased transmissibility is a speculation until there's proper data analysis; the 70% figure quoted in some sources is very likely to be an overestimation. As for vaccines, they are very likely to be effective, for numerous reasons. For starters, the vaccines target numerous epitopes of the spike protein, and that's extremely unlikely that mutations in a single variant of the virus would alter ALL of these epitopes, rendering the vaccine useless. Also, the vaccines were created based on the original genome of the virus after it was first sequenced and made public in January, but the clinical trials data shows that it provided effective protection against variants of the virus that ocurred later this year. And even if there happened to be a new variant some day in the future that somehow rendered the existing vaccines completely useless, it's not that much of a big deal anyway - the biggest advantage of mRNA vaccines is the fact that they can be created extremely fast, so you'd need just a few days to modify the existing ones to target the new variant instead of the original one.

Nice landing animation...

I bought all three tomes of 1Q84 today... That will be my next one after I finish the Wernher von Braun biography. Thanks for bringing me back to Murakami's world

Let's just say that as someone coming from a small country that has been screwed by many "great powers" throughout the history, I'm not particularly fond of any of them.

There's an old Russian saying which basically claims that "Russia cannot be understood by the mind alone", but I think you can apply it to the US pretty well, too

And that's again the issue of media fueling the mass hysteria by bringing unnecesary confusion to people who are already getting conflicting information every week. Does my head in.

I mean the data is likely accurate, it's just that the interpretation of it is not very clear

Cheers, a few things I noticed after quickly going through it: - they label a place as an "outbreak" if at least three people that tested positive have been in that place over the same 14-day period. That doesn't indicate that any of them caught the virus there - just that they have been there at some point within the last 2 weeks. - the "outbreaks" at grocery stores are likely affecting the employees working in close proximity to each other for prolonged periods of time; that isn't likely to convey any measurable risk to the customers though. - they don't assess the risk, just present the quantitave number of outbreaks that occured.

Western society has indeed become very risk-averse, there's no doubt about that...

Do you have a link to the study, by any chance? I find that conclusion (regarding supermarkets) very bizarre...unless there's no distancing and nobody is wearing masks, that is.

I take it this study didn't take nursing homes, prisons, hospitals, public transportation, schools, restaurants or places of religious worship into account? Because I can't imagine how a short grocery shopping trip to a supermarket could pose a higher risk than spending time in any of the above mentioned places which tend to be by far more crowded, lack distancing, and have by far longer times of potential exposure, increasing the risk of infection.

Nice... The reason I asked, Dance Dance Dance was my first book of his as I got it as a birthday present years ago; didn't realise it was a sequel to The Wild Sheep Chase so was a bit confused at times, but I loved it. If you enjoy it, I'd highly recommend Kafka on the Shore. My most favourite Murakami novel, and also one of my favourite books ever...