Peter Todd @pete@petertodd.org

Gov. DeSantis on media lies, "we're punching back"

This could get interesting if he has any guts.

Background: https://reason.com/2021/04/05/60-minutes-ron-desantis-vaccines-florida-publix-sharyn-alfonsi/

Texas Rangers vs Blue Jays today. 100% full to capacity, hardly any masks.

...yet cases, deaths, positivity rate, and long-term-care cases are all continuing to go down after a month with all lockdown restrictions lifted: https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/texas-hitting-record-low-numbers-covid-19-cases-hospitalizations-deaths-positivity-rate-statistics-april-2021/287-4723aa91-4172-4361-b90f-958f881dcb0c

@nvk For example, I could easily see this targeting control of corporations to the extent where it's dangerous to hire a Canadian as a CEO, or have a Canadian on the board of directors, because it might be seen as a form of ownership due to the control they exert over that wealth.

A possible outcome is privately owned companies become targets, forcing all non-trivial companies to be publicly owned. Which of course, is hugely inefficient.

@nvk Yes. But presumably we'll get _another_ level of that, going even farther. Remember this is targeting beneficial ownership of any kind (assuming they're even slightly competent at it).

@waxwing Something that people may be discounting in this story is that the beam he was hit with was iiuc quite narrow. People often survive deep, penetrating, head wounds, and a narrow deeply penetrating beam may very well be _less_ harmful than an equivalent thickness bullet.

@waxwing Speaking of, a surprising amount of plastic is actually radiation crosslinked. Usually with electron beams.

@waxwing For sure. Materials do rweird things when you inject energy into them constantly from radiation. Not to mention the complexity of predicting how alloys will behave in environments with enough radiation to have a non-trivial amount of the materials transmuted; it's common for alloys to have parts-per-million tolerances. Reactors also tend to require much longer maintenance free time periods than is typical, making understanding that degradation even more important.

@waxwing Though seriously, the complexity of measuring any of this stuff is still way less than so many chemical contaminants. Chemical contaminants don't come with the handy feature of regularly shooting off easily detected energy packets. :)

@waxwing Well, you can tell me something useful: don't go swimming in the spent fuel pool. You might die of lead poisoning. :D #xkcd

@waxwing IIUC the bragg peak effect isn't a huge difference. Significant. But we're talking about maybe 5x, not orders of magnitude.

@waxwing IIUC it can however make the relative danger of certain beta emitters and alpha particles emitters complex to compare, as there are some very low energy beta emitters, and some very high energy alpha emitters. Eg Tritium is a common example of a low energy beta emitter that acts more like an alpha emitter in many circumstances.

@waxwing Oh, actually I do see your point re: the Bragg peak effect. Alpha particles actually do that too. But it doesn't make a practical difference re: health because they're stopped so quickly.

@waxwing Re-read what I wrote; I think we're saying exactly the same thing. :)

@nvk "Taxing all gross wealth above $1 billion"

It'll be fun watching all the legal structures that pop up to ensure people don't actually own anything...

@waxwing Radiation works that way in general. The *more* penetrating radiation is less harmful to get inside your body, because the energy is spread over a larger area. So contamination that produces alpha particles is safer externally, because almost anything can stop it. But more deadly internally, because what stops the particles is your own tissues.

...and bullets work that way too, just at a bigger scale...