randomsnark

@randomsnark@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What does dying from all causes mean?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It means the overall death rate in the sample group was decreased substantially. The number of people who survived because they didn’t get lung cancer or blood clots was so large that it had a noticeable impact on the number of total survivors, even when you include death by bus. This is a useful measure for a couple of reasons. One, it accounts for the prevalence of the disease being prevented - cutting all pork from your diet prevents 100% of deaths by trichinosis, which accounts for like 0.00001% of deaths from all causes (completely made up numbers and example, without consulting any sources). Two, it could account for net change in survival, for a treatment or behavior that has both positive and negative effects - giving radiation therapy indiscriminately to everyone with any kind of lump might decrease rate of dying from breast cancer, but increase death “from all causes” because it causes more problems than it solves.

  I guess an additional way it might be useful is if we don’t yet have data on the exact mechanisms by which the treatment helps or what exactly its preventing - all we know is that we gave group A the treatment and not group B, and after 20 years there were a lot more people alive in group A, but we haven’t yet found a pattern in which causes of death were most affected and how.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I said 'That's my purse'.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  bobby hill managed to make perfect cell double over in pain, so I’m pretty sure he could annihilate namek-era goku

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Lichens are things⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For anyone else who was curious about lichens covering “a not insignificant amount” of the earth’s surface, a quick google tells me it’s about 7% (according to e.g. new york times, scientific american, etc)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨T. rex⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I came to the comments looking for context, but since nobody has sold it yet, did some googling. I believe this is the reference: news.sky.com/…/tyrannosaurus-rex-could-have-been-…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨turkey pot pies⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  missed opportunity to mention to volume of a pizza pie with radius z and depth a

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to recognize words⁩ ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Another commenter pointed out that if you induce this through repetition it’s called semantic satiation, but the more general case is known as jamais vu. It sounds like yours isn’t caused by semantic satiation. Brains are weird and often do things like this for completely benign reasons or no reason at all. Having said that, Doctor Google (who we all know not to trust) suggests causes can include epilepsy or migraine.

  In any case, it might be worth looking into, if it’s something that’s causing difficulties for you. In general if it’s some specific medical cause a neurologist would be the relevant specialist but your primary care physician or general practitioner would be your first port of call and might be able to recommend further course of action.