> Smoking within 30 minutes of measurement can raise the systolic blood pressure to 20 mmHg
> a distended bladder can increase systolic and diastolic measurements by 10 to 15 mmHg.
> Sitting in a chair lacking back support can raise systolic blood pressure to 10 mmHg, and a similar increase is observed when both legs are crossed.
> Talking/listening during measurements can increase systolic and diastolic measurements by 10 mmHg.
The major exception is cuff placement over clothing which is noted to vary results by up to 50 mmHg but doing that is stupid anyway and makes you fail medical school.
For me, the first reading is usually higher (by 20-30, even after a long rest period) and subsequent ones get lower and lower as I calm down from the initial worry about whether I will get a high reading or not.
At the doctor's office / hospital I try to tell them this, but they tend not to care. I think they know it varies a lot, they know about psychological effects, but i) they anyway take it much less seriously than overthinkers like me and some fellow HN-ers would imagine and ii) they may prescribe something and anyway expect it not to do much, and also expect the patient not to follow through with taking it properly etc. Honestly, the whole thing is quite a farce. The painful truth is that generic lifestyle improvements are the biggest bang for your buck, instead of worrying about getting exact and precise blood pressure readings.
The other similar big thing is routine blood tests for deficiencies and cholesterol, iron etc. It can also have huge variance over the year, and often people only do it every one or two years and take it as this extremely solid evidence that you need to take this or that medicine. If we were truly serious about this, we would do several tests, separated by weeks, done with different kit manufacturers at different labs etc.
I think the reason for not doing more thorough testing is implicitly admitting that the results aren't really all that actionable and improved precision doesn't really improve treatments because we have no idea what to really do with the results. There are studies showing correlations/causations of certain interventions on specific markers, and those markers are in turn correlated to some outcomes, but often the "evidence-based medicine" doesn't follow the full chain towards the actual outcome.
The other big reason for not measuring more times is the same that a man with a watch knows the time, but a man with two watches is never quite sure about it. In other words, if you got a test and had a result, you can document this and all is fine.
Good question, for myself personally (anecdotally) I got systolic of 145-ish in the doctor's office and 120-ish at home. This was validated by a medical take-home 24h cuff.
> Kotlin is really cool and arguably better than Java. But the language is very hard to read ('easy' to write)
I had the same immediate reaction. This style of code is something the Scala community used to be in love with, and was criticized for it. The community has largely moved away from this style, so it's interesting to see history possibly repeating itself with Kotlin.
Private ownership would become impractical for the hoi polloi.
The wealthy would need to pay a new class of bureaucrats to keep asset values up to date, to continuously incorporate new information into their marks. Everyone else would be better off renting--owning a car would be risky as it could be snatched from you at a moment's notice due to an overnight shift in the metal markets.
Remarkably similar to a feudal system, actually.
EDIT: What am I thinking, you'd just move all your financial assets overseas and maintain as little real property as possible domestically. The same thing folks do in the Gulf countries where the monarch gets stealsy from time to time.
Bob declared his car to be worth $18k in 2023. Fred fills in an official form, pays $18k to bob, and takes bobs car. Perhaps a 1 month handover period is given, and perhaps a 10% 'hostile sale' fee is given to the government to prevent abuse of the system to take houses from grannies.
Lets say any item worth over $10k (including cars, land, houses, companies, etc) would be part of the system.
Another way of looking at it is "all items in the nation are always for sale, and if you don't want to sell you better choose a high price".
Obviously if you don't want your stuff taken, declare a high value. But you'll pay a bit more tax for the privilege.
Perhaps we could institute a similar law for people and tax their self reported value of their time/labor. If you under-report you can be press-ganged into slavery for a specified duration, say 1 year.
This would ensure that people's labor and their bodies would be put to the most efficient economical use as well as increase tax revenue.
It would also solve the problem of undercompensating of workers. If your employer values your experience and knowledge, they would have to pay a premium for it, otherwise a competitor would buy you out from under them.
poaching is currently inefficient. Poachers have find employees and many employees refuse the offer for selfish reasons, Even if the salary is higher and would generate higher income taxes. These people are cheating society of tax revenue and growth it would otherwise have.
Lots of people hoard their time, spending it with friends, family, and children. This would force that time and labor into the market, where it could be taxed and contribute to social good.
A woman reading a book or singing to their child creates no taxable income, and doesn't contribute to GDP. Under the current proposal, If She didn't pay sufficient income tax on the time she selfishly hoards, a company like hooters could buy her and put her labor to more productive use.
So now you have a full time job managing the declared value of all of your assets? Or perhaps you'd suggest families now have to hire an asset management firm?
If you show up at the tax assessor's office with a check for more than the self-reported value of my home, realistically plus the premium the government pays in eminent domain cases, you get the title. That idea is pretty much "eminent domain for all."
This is terrible. I don't want to loose a priceless family heirloom (grandma's Sheraton-style rocking chair from 1890s) just because someone wants it and can write a check for $1 more than the assessed value. That discounts sentimental value. And if I now have to declare sentimental value and pay taxes on it, I'd rather burn it to the ground (grandma would approve).
A lot of people hate eminent domain too, for that exact reason. I think libertarians want to get rid of it entirely because it's an involuntary transaction.
Not being born to a grandma who could afford a life stable enough to preserve and pass down such a chair is also an involuntary transaction, but libertarians don’t seem to talk about that.
That seems really annoying to deal with. It's possible it would lead to a better society eventually, but in the short term I'd rather speculators not buy my shitbox car out from under me because they spotted the chip shortage before I did.
I think that's the point, to free up all the economic activity that's being held up by patents, copyright and land underuse, and to get fair tax assessment on assets previously exempt from property taxes as a bonus.
I don't see how this has anything to do with patents or copyright. Presumably, those would be subject to this seizure mechanism and thus flow to those most willing to enforce their claims.
Like, 99% of the activity under such a mechanism would be transfers of financial assets.
A power law land value tax would take care of most of the problem at almost no cost (since land is assessed regularly anyway).
This should completely replace income tax. Copyright terms should also be 10 years, maybe 15 max. Patents could probably stay as is, but I don’t see any problem reducing them too.
> power law land value tax would take care of most of the problem at almost no cost (since land is assessed regularly anyway)
Sure. This is a totally different proposal.
Would note that you could go a long way to making this proposal electorally appealing by exempting primary residences. (In my experience, the assessed value of a home is at best loosely related to its market value.)
It would be electorally appealing, but would fail at one of the main benefits.
The number one waste of space in the US is people’s excessively large footprint, causing enormous consumption of energy and infrastructure costs that are borne by future generations.
All these detached single family homes on 0.1+ acre lots are massively expensive and the people living in them hardly pay taxes proportionate to the benefit they receive from the government. Instead, our society takes from the working class via income tax.
If you want to live in a detached home on a large lot, be ready to pay the appropriate land value taxes.
If you want to conserve and use less of society’s resources, live in an apartment building.
Since the tax formula would be a power law function, it would inherently not be punitive to the vast majority of Americans who don’t live on outsize plots of land.
The more stuff you move further distances, the more energy you need.
Obviously, more people living in a square mile will use less energy per person than fewer people living in a square mile.
Think about all the energy needed to move water/sewer/trash/gas/police/ambulances/etc in and around a neighborhood where 100 people live in a Barcelona style communal living versus 100 detached homes on 0.1 acres each.
The huge knock on effects of the latter is that it then necessitates personal vehicle transport, which then compounds into more space being needed for huge arterial roads and highways, which then makes neighborhoods unwalkable, further necessitating personal vehicle transport, and so on and so forth.
> DOA. Partly due to the electoral college. Partly due to American optimism and aspiration. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
I’m under no illusion, but I also don’t see a need to inconvenience myself with half measures if my countrymen are not willing to do what is necessary.
Most of the blue collar workers I know live in single family suburban homes. Factories are rarely located in urban centers, and corporate dormitories are no longer much of a thing in this country.
I don’t see why what color collar someone is labeled as is relevant. My assertion is simply that occupying surface area consumes an incredible amount of resources that are not proportionately represented in today’s methods of taxation.
You've switched from arguing for a land value tax to arguing for densification. LVTs shoulod cause densification ceteris paribus.
Zoning, however, is the mutandis. LVTs absent zoning reform would not be expected to change much in cities. Zoning reform absent LVTs would spark a systemic boom in densification.
Zoning reform and LVTs are thus orthogonal, with the scant interaction being almost entirely defined by the ratio of unbuilt structures due exclusively to zoning or land hoarding. I asserted that ratio is close to one, due to ample evidence for the former. I asked you for evidence of the latter; "physics" is not a response.
> I also don’t see a need to inconvenience myself with half measures if my countrymen are not willing to do what is necessary
This is, by definition, extremism. It's generally seen as a red flag, communicating lack of commitment and/or dogmatic delusions.
>You've switched from arguing for a land value tax to arguing for densification. LVTs shoulod cause densification ceteris paribus.
Yes, but exempting homes from LVTs would counteract some of the incentive for densification. I would even go so far as to say excessive space for homes (which goes along with infrastructure that prioritizes cars) is causing knock on effects like kids not being able to roam around outside, and hence causing having kids to be a bigger burden, and so on and so forth.
>Zoning reform absent LVTs would spark a systemic boom in densification.
I would challenge this assumption, as many people prefer suburban quality of life that depend on not living in densely populated communities. Could be from simply preferring more space for themselves or their cars to being in school districts with higher proportions of kids from richer parents.
>I asked you for evidence of the latter;
I am not sure what you are referring to by former and latter here, but when I mean "waste of space", I mean front a big picture view in terms of resource/energy consumption on a societal level as well as knock on effects of sedentary lifestyles, less interaction with neighbors, and so on.
Physics is the answer to the resource/energy consumption part of why it is a "waste of space". If the goal was to ever meaningfully reduce emissions or consumption of various resources, then it would have to involve denser communities.
I would say that both zoning reform and LVT is necessary to accomplish broad reform.
>This is, by definition, extremism. It's generally seen as a red flag, communicating lack of commitment and/or dogmatic delusions.
Unfortunately, my conclusion from observing humanity so far is that it is extremely difficult to reach consensus when the decision involves lots of short term individual sacrifice in exchange for long term societal benefit. I would say that my hopes now lie with technological progress, rather than say, paper straws or recycling plastics, as those seem to be distractions meant to placate.
The unstated assumption here is that efficiency is the most important thing, rather than any of a number of other things we could value like stability, security, safety, reliability, and so on. The problem with efficiency-driven ideas is that they almost always will result in a bunch of people with money descending on a bunch of people without money and exploiting the difference to...make money.
There’s a similar concept with real estate taxes in some countries: you pay your tax based on self-reported valuation, but if you sell for a price that’s higher than this valuation then you have to pay adjusted tax for like 5 years back.
Scale to zero makes me think it might be useful to specify a time window (cron?) where scaling to zero is allowed, i.e. 6pm-8am it can scale to zero but during the work day never fully scale to zero. Makes me wonder if this is a common pattern.
For webapps which are accessed as web pages or through API, looking at the API activity will indicate whether the app is being actively used. Clace currently uses no new API calls with last 3 minutes as indicating idleness. This is aggressive, it can be tuned as required https://clace.io/docs/container/config/. For apps using websockets or server-sent events, the API activity check will not be accurate.
For background jobs and cron jobs, some kind of cron job can be defined in the app, to wake up the container. This is not supported currently. If an app has background jobs or idle check is not accurate, the auto-pause can be disabled.
