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Mildly amusing use of AI impersonation, competent mathematics, short!

Short answer: we don't know.

Interesting history: Crimea was its own little Soviet Socialist Republic from 1921 until 1945, then part of the Russian one until 1954, when Khrushchev meddled.

On a personal note, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, [The Charge of the Light Brigade](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45319/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade) was popular when I was a child. But now I'm grown up, nobody in the UK seems to remember that Crimea was part of Russia, back when Britain and France invaded Russia to help the Ottoman Empire. I don't get how "Crimea was part of Russia" has disappearred down the memory hole, when there was a catchy poem to anchor the memory. Normal people seem weirdly trapped in an eternal present of what the TV just told them.

This video comes from a fringe political party https://homelandparty.org

It is unashamedly nationalist https://homelandparty.org/our-thinking/nationalism-explained/

Its policy pages are a little light.

"Environment" is mostly pro-farmer. Which is correct globally, but awkward for crowded island that has traded manufactures for food for centuries.

"Community Care" relies on picking the fruit of the magic money tree. My understanding is that life-span = health-span + grim-span and that recent medical progress has been adding three years to the grim-span for every year that it adds to the health span. Ignore that and the magic money tree will be plucked bare and die :-(

Marginal Revolution links to https://dailysceptic.org/2024/03/20/r-i-p-the-scottish-enlightenment-1697-2024/
and has many comments bashing the Scottish Government for the oppressive speech law, due to come in on 1st April

Perhaps this https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/12295133/snp-chiefs-release-106-pages-whatsapp-messages/ is a better link.

In just 4'52" this video explains why isolating Fluorine is a hopeless quest, and gives technical details of the brilliant innovations that let Henri Moissan succeed.

Short answer: He was a procurer. Ten minute excerpt from a longer video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4v7AnxCNxA

This story caught my eye for a different reason from the scientific fraud narrative.

What do we mean when we say that drug A is better than drug B ? Using "drug A" and "drug B" as names clashes with English grammar. In the interests of euphony, I've used a name generator and will call them Aproxin and Benzolax. Here are three different things that we might mean when we say that Aproxin is better than Benzolax because Aproxin works for 40% of patients, but Benzolax only works for 30%.

First meaning: Independent. Some lucky folk respond well to both 0.4 x 0.3 = 12%. Some patients (0.4 x 0.7 = 28%) only respond to Aproxin. Others (0.6 x 0.3 = 18%) only respond to Benzolax. Many (0.6 x 0.7 = 42%) benefit from neither.

Second meaning: Dominant. Hope that you are one of the 40% who respond to Aproxin. That forty percent splits into three quarters who also respond to Benzolax, and one quarter who don't respond to Benzolax. Notice the cunning with which I have contrived the numbers in my made up example. That is all of the 30% who respond to Benzolax accounted for. No-one responds to Benzolax and not to Aproxin. 60% of patients are out of luck. Obviously you try Aproxin first. If it doesn't help, give up. Benzolax has found itself in a context in which it is entirely useless.

Third meaning: Sequential. Weirdly, no-one responds to both drugs. You try Aproxin first. If it doesn't work, you move on to Benzolax. Notice how this messes with the numbers. If 40% respond to Aproxin, that leaves 60% moving on to Benzolax. Half of those who try Benzolax (under this treatment protocol) benefit. That is 50%, up from the 30% who benefited in the old days before Aproxin was discovered.

Notice how the discovery of Aproxin affects the sales of Benzolax. In the Dominant case, Benzolax becomes obsolete. In the Sequential case, a superficial reading/misunderstanding of the numbers makes it look as though the discovery of Aproxin makes Benzolax work better.

So how do you compare drugs? I've noticed that trials generally do a naive random assignment. You get numbers for the effectiveness of each drug as though the other drugs didn't exist. But how do the medicines relate? Independent? Dominant? Sequential? Not one of the extreme cases? The trials don't say. But it does matter for treatment.

At the heart of the article is STAR*D, Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/epdf/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.11.1905 Some-one has actually gone ahead and tried to measure what happens when you try drugs in sequence. They cheat which is the usual money grubbing of modern science. On the other hand, that are looking at the medically important comparison, which is progress.

This blog post is about her pleading for leniency for fraudster Abdul Rauf.

I followed the link from a youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvUE7X-2mjY titled "SNP Nicola Sturgeon has a very dubious past. This is old news but not widely known."

I'm more interested in the blog itself Caltonjock https://caltonjock.com/ which seems to be active and busy digging into the details of Scottish politics.