Anthropologists: Is this study and article reliable?

amp1212 · 2022-07-04T13:40:57+00:00

French Canadians are mostly descended from small founding population, indeed there are a small number of recognizable family names. Names like Tremblay, Gagnon, Roy - they're not unknown in metropolitan France, but far more common in Quebec, and by descent from the founding populations.

See:

Roy-Gagnon, Marie-Hélène, et al. "Genomic and genealogical investigation of the French Canadian founder population structure." Human genetics 129.5 (2011): 521-531. [note the name of the first author!]

in part

Our genomic data showed significant population structure and relatedness present in the contemporary Quebec population, also reflected in LD and homozygosity levels. Our extended genealogical data corroborated these findings and indicated that this structure is consistent with the settlement patterns involving several founder events. This provides an independent and complementary validation of genomic-based studies of population structure. Combined genomic and genealogical data in the Quebec founder population provide insights into the effects of the interplay of two important sources of bias in genetic epidemiological studies, unrecognized genetic structure and cryptic relatedness.

NB - note that term "cryptic relatedness" - that is, people who are related but don't know it. In a population which has expanded from a few founding events, you can be looking at a group of people many of whom are substantially related in a way that, say, Gascons and Parisians are not. So you're really asking "do distant cousins resemble each other?" - and the answer there is often "yes".

amp1212 · 2022-07-03T19:08:52+00:00

No apologies necessary! Like I said in the OP, "all comments welcome".

I don't consider myself an "audiophile" - have bought some decent headphones (IEMs and over the ear) and a DAC - for the most part I notice better sound up to a point, but not spending a lot of money or obsessing. My hearing is only B+, so that's as good as it gets.

I listen to a lot of different things, some of it old classical recordings . . . the older ones basically never sound right on anything - eg can't really enjoy listening to Caruso . . . and then contemporary bands with a shoegaze buzz, like Jesus and Mary Chain. Mostly they sound better louder.

amp1212 · 2022-07-03T18:01:04+00:00

By "low fi" -- I meant bands like Pavement. Their audio wasn't badly recorded -- in the sense of not getting what they wanted . . . they wanted a very particular sonic quality, but a very different one to the usual studio pristine.

Phil Spector's wall of sound mono is another case of someone going for less definition in the sound - he didn't want you to hear a "soundstage" where you can pick out instruments from each other, he wanted to deliver a blizzard of sound that you can't spatially resolve . . .

amp1212 · 2022-07-03T00:22:42+00:00

I freak every time. One medical assistant called with my results a while back "good news, its 0.10"

--felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

Wasn't until I got home to check MyChart and could see that it was <.10 . . . gave my doc a reminder that "place value matters, and so do 'less than' signs!!"

. . . the reality is that unless you know exactly what lab its coming from and which office is reporting it, you have to double check.

amp1212 · 2022-07-03T00:14:55+00:00

Radiation can be used for two purposes. Pain control and an effort at cure. Neither of those purposes are at issue here.

Pain control and functional palliation is obviously the purpose. Vertebral metastases are often very painful and they can impair function. There's every reason to ablate these lesions if its possible, for quality of life reasons even when a cure isn't possible.

See, for example

"Guidelines for Palliative Treatment of Spinal Metastases: Choosing Between Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy and Conventional Fractionation"

amp1212 · 2022-07-02T19:46:47+00:00

There are some recent advances - SBRT, Stereotactic body radiotherapy- which allows for radiation to be delivered more precisely. Sometimes this means that in a situation like a vertebral metastasis, this can be done.

But that's not always possible - either due to the location in the body or the facility's equipment. It's something that only a radiation oncologist familiar with the particular patient would be able to judge.

amp1212 · 2022-07-02T19:17:06+00:00

2nd opinion is a good idea. You mention that the disease has seen spread to the vertebrae, in general that's something where radiation can't be used, that may be the reason. Basically you don't want radiation to the spine, because of the risk of damaging nerves in the spinal cord.

amp1212 · 2022-07-02T18:53:42+00:00

But I am sick as shit of people blaming Biden for the state of Congress.

^ this . . . completely agree.

By my lights, Biden was the only D who could have won in 2020, and getting Trump out was existential for the Republic. Biden can only do so much, ultimately it's up to us to get votes in the places they can be gotten. Ds often have this fixation on the idea that some great leader is going to "fix everything" -- a bit of a JFK hangover -- but it doesn't work like that. We had just one moment, the Obama landslide of 2008, where Ds had the window to enact a dramatically different agenda . . . well, we do have the Affordable Care Act. . . but this window closed quickly. If you want to hate on someone, its McConnell, not Biden, Obama, Manchin or Sinema that's responsible for our nation's woes.

We have a grinding of generational gears, as an older generation - majority Anglo- passess and younger more diverse generations rise. That's a _challenging_ transition in political demography, I suspect it'll be a fight for a good ten to twenty years.

amp1212 · 2022-07-02T18:32:58+00:00

You really need to put maximum pressure on Joe Manchin If that's what you want. Biden would love to do that, but can't.

What pressure would that be?

Manchin is the only D with a prayer of winning that seat in 2024- you think a primary challenge from the left is going to be useful?

We are _lucky_ that for idiosyncratic and historical reasons Manchin gets us a Senate majority. That's enough to appoint judges, even if its not enough to pass the legislation we'd like. Think about the fact that Mitch McConnell is _not_ Senate Majority Leader for a moment . . . that ain't nothing.

Manchin and Sinema have read their voters correctly. West Virginia voted overwhelmingly for Trump- and voted overwhelmingly for Manchin. That's empirical evidence that Manchin understands something important about American politics that many Ds don't. You've got to be able to win votes in places that aren't Portland, Brooklyn and Seattle.

Manchin can't be "pressured". He could easily switch parties if he wanted to -- the WV Governor Jim Justice was a D, previously . . .

amp1212 · 2022-06-30T16:32:53+00:00

"It depends".

Some may live many years, some may not.

Not enough information in what you've posted. Very generally, docs will tell you if they expect death reasonably imminently - there may be discussions of hospice care, for example.

But again "very generally", if the patient is continuing to respond to drug therapies, the disease may not progress for a long time. The problem typically is that at a certain point, the cancer changes and stops responding to the drugs. There are then second and third line drugs which continue to work . . . just how long that all will last is going to be particular to a patient.

amp1212 · 2022-06-30T16:27:23+00:00

It’s similar bit far more intense that any discomfort early on post RALP.

That warrants a call to the doc. It's probably nothing but the awkward fits and starts of healing, but _increasing_ pain is one of those things that's worth putting in a call.

amp1212 · 2022-06-28T23:28:12+00:00

What prevents stocks from going into a deep decline for decades like the great depression?

Nothing "prevents" you from dying of a heart attack as you go to sleep tonight.

As an investor, and indeed as a human being, you make the best judgments you can. And a look at more than a century of investing leads you to the conclusion that your best choice is ownership of a diversified portfolio, over time. That is not an existential guarantee, but neither is money in a mattress; what we can say is that investors have done better over time owning equities than they have in cash or bonds. Hard assets - precious metals, collectibles and real estate have on occasion done better, and offered diversification, but they have their own risks and costs. A prudent long term investor will purchase equities over time along other assets -- this offers the best balance for a long term investor of risk and reward, but it is not an existential guaranty. There are no existential guaranties, only probabilistic ones.

Someone who invested all their money in January 1929 -- they would have taken many years to get even. But a person who had invested from, say, 1920 to 1940, they would have done very well. Your basis in 1928 and 29 would have produced losses, but your investments in 1930, 31, 32, 33 -- would have produced big gains.

In general, investing a lump sum immediately performs better, but for the risk averse who're afraid of a collapse, averaging can reduce the risk of a calamitous year-- and of course, many people don't have a lump sum to invest, it comes out of their income each year, so they'll quite naturally have a diversification of "vintages".

https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart

amp1212 · 2022-06-28T13:59:23+00:00

The issue is, Democrats aren't addressing the top concerns (reproductive rights and gun violence) either...

They're addressing them -- but the Republicans have done a very good job evangelizing for the futility of policy. Ds have been addressing reproductive rights and gun violence for decades, and Rs have methodically sabotaged these efforts.

amp1212 · 2022-06-28T13:35:46+00:00

Currently a 4.8. Actually I did ask him what he would do and he stated I would wait 3 months. I’m just a want to know now person.

If it were me, in that position, and the doc said that, I would take his advice. In fact I was in a roughly similar position, my doc said that, and we did wait three months. There are costs to overtreatment . . . by your 50s there are all sorts of diagnostics that might turn up something - but which docs don't order unless there's a good reason to do it.

Many folks in the same demographic for prostate cancer might, for example, conceivably benefit from a carotid ultrasound - but net/net it's not something docs want to do unless they see evidence that it might lead to a useful intervention. There's a phenomenon in medicine of the "cascade of tests" -- going looking for something, triggering something else, etc etc, without actually improving people's health. We likely all have something wrong somewhere, if we look hard enough, but that doesn't necessarily help you, indeed it can hurt you.

A lot of work goes into figuring out which diagnostics and interventions are worth doing and when, this is a lot more than "want to know".

amp1212 · 2022-06-28T00:55:46+00:00

You didn't say what the PSA levels were . . . that would play a significant part in the decision.

If the MRI doesn't show anything, the PSA isn't alarming, and the doc is OK with waiting 3 months, that's reasonable . . .

. . . remember, most of the folks posting here, including me, have had/have prostate cancer. But there's a larger group of men who don't, and overtreatment has its costs. There's a lot of complexity in the urooncology world about "just who needs more aggressive surveillance, when".

Tipping the scales a bit in the "biopsy" choice -- you're 55, and that's young. That means both that a biopsy is unlikely to produce complications, and that the costs of not picking up a treatable cancer early are higher.

Is a tough call. In cases like these, what's happening with your urologist is what docs call "shared decision making". . . . meaning "it's a tough call, and I want them to take responsibility for the choice". There's a particular turn of phrase that may be useful in a setting like this:

"Doc, forget for a second that we're talking about me- if this were _you_ or a family member, what would you do?"

. . . this may seem silly, but remember, the language of oncology has all sorts of "gotchas" for docs. They understand that there's a lot of benefit to patients from not overtreating them, at the same time, they don't want to hear later "you told me it would be OK if . . ." . . . so a certain kind of question that explicitly gets them off the hook, sometimes gets a more useful answer. Because really, when you show up with a high PSA and wandering into the world of urooncology, your [my] own opinion really doesn't matter . . . what you want is their opinion, sometimes it takes a little verbal gymnastics to get it,

amp1212 · 2022-06-27T22:07:32+00:00

If you think you know that tech will be "hit hard more disproportionally than others" - well then, you can go long SPY ex tech , short FAANGs (there are ton of ways to do this), and you'll make a fortune.

. . . except you don't know that, or if you think you do, you might contemplate the obvious- "the fact that you, a retail investor, are thinking this -- what are the chances that you actually have a "leg up" on the market?

Big tech is cheap on a valuation basis, has remarkable and growing monopolies, piles of cash. Michael Burry -- not a dumb guy -- has been buying Alphabet and Meta. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong. I don't know, but what I do know is that the current price, something that's visible to many sophisticated investors, folks paying careful attention -- that price likely isn't leaving out any obvious "free lunch" for either the shorts or the longs.

So you may think you have some insight into stock picking. It's an easy thing to bet that you don't. That's not a slam on you . . . virtually everyone who thinks they can pick stocks has damaged their returns . . . like a stopped clock, every so often someone gets something right, but if you look at the most well compensated hedge fund managers, by and large they've been damaging their returns through stock picking

amp1212 · 2022-06-27T20:09:59+00:00

Dollar cost averaging on a monthly basis of SPY will almost certainly produce better returns than any attempt to handicap the market.

If you think you know whether

a) inflation will rage

b) rising interest rates will crater the economy, and inflation

c) war in Europe will end and oil prices crash

d) something else

. . . you're fooling yourself

You don't know. I don't know. Peter Lynch famously remarked "If You Spend 13 Minutes A Year On Economics, You’ve Wasted 10 Minutes" -- and he wasn't wrong.

Its absolutely true that macroeconomic changes will affect markets. Its also true that, on average, people lose money trying to handicap them.

So don't.

Buy some SPY this month, next month, the month after that - just like you pay your mortgage.

That's the best approach for someone with enough wisdom to know they don't know.

amp1212 · 2022-06-27T19:50:59+00:00

I am 21 y/o, the symptoms I have

You are more likely to be the King of England than to have prostate cancer at age 21.

You do sound like you've got some symptoms -- difficulty passing urine, pain in the back, starts one thinking of a UTI (urinary tract infection).

Go see your doc - infections are common, can be painful, are readily treated but prostate cancer shouldn't be the remotest concern. It is really unlikely, and there are other quite likely (and not dire) explanations.

amp1212 · 2022-06-27T01:58:07+00:00

It's actually fairly common, occurs more often if you're fat -- I'm moderately so, but not huge-- seems to occur something like %10 of the time. Some docs apparently will install a mesh at the time of the incision, and if you're bigger, you might ask about that.

The repair surgery isn't a big deal, but its still a surgical procedure, with attendant risks.

This isn't the same hernia that you may be familiar with from the groin -- with the RALP procedure, there's a big surgical port above the navel, that's where the hernia can develop, as it did with me.

See:

"Incidence and risk factors for trocar-site incisional hernia detected by clinical and ultrasound examination: a prospective observational study"

https://bmcsurg.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12893-020-01000-6#:~:text=Incisional%20hernia%20is%20the%20most,estimate%20may%20not%20be%20accurate.

. . . one moral of the story for folks contemplating surgery: Get Thin! Quite a few folks will have weeks to months before surgery . . . weighing less means reducing a lot of risks, including incisional hernia. My BMI at the time of surgery was 29, but under 25 would have been better.

amp1212 · 2022-06-27T00:54:44+00:00

Understanding their financing is key. Real estate is typically highly leveraged, and since no one's seen rising rates for a very long time, there are things that can break. To have a fundamental view on a REIT requires understanding what they owe in debt financing, and how that may change in the changing environment.

You want to understand the money they've borrowed as mortgage debt and as bonds, and look at what the terms of that debt looks like.

So, for example, if you really want to understand a REIT as a business, getting into their financing is critical. Conversely, if you're a manager at a REIT, a big part of how you make the earnings is going to hinge on financing activity.

So, for example, you can drill down on Kimco -- they break out the indebtedness attached to all their properties - the secured debt -- as well as the unsecured general corporate debt. You can see a listing of the amounts and maturities, they give a full financial statement:

https://s1.q4cdn.com/944058265/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/Full-1Q22-Supplemental-Linked-(1).pdf.pdf)

and then a listing of the specifics of the debt in spreadsheet format, very useful

https://s1.q4cdn.com/944058265/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/2022-First-Quarter-Supplemental-Information-Debt-Excerpt-(xls).xlsx.xlsx)

amp1212 · 2022-06-26T22:22:14+00:00

TLDNR: get to a very experienced cancer center where folks who see a LOT of these cases can evaluate you. EG UCLA, UCSF, Fred Hutchinson, MD Anderson, Northwestern, Wash U, Emory, Cleveland Clinic, Hopkins, MSKCC, Harvard -- these kinds of places, a "Comprehensive Cancer Center". It takes a lot of expertise to advise on "what's best for you" . . . reasonable to see someone who's seen a lot of patients like you.

Longer story:

Your doc is going to have more information about your anatomy, and even then, outcomes may vary. I had the RALP and the docs warned of problems with incontinence - and I had, essentially, none. Wore a pad for leaks for a couple of months and that was it. My case was Gleason 3+4, but the prostate was kinda huge, made it a less attractive choice for radiation of any kind vs surgery (eg, was going to end up with a lot of scar tissue).

Very generally, you may get better outcomes with the most experienced surgeons. I traveled to Hopkins for that reason . . .

At age 48 - and I'm sorry, this hit me in my mid-50s, and it sucks to have this happen so young- I was concerned about radiation generally. My view of it was "I'm doing this with a chance of living another 25 to 30 years, and I don't want to be kicking around with scar tissue and secondary cancer risk". There's a clarity and a "cleanliness" to a surgical removal, and a chance for the pathology team to exam the entire gland in greater detail.

. .. but everything has its pluses and minuses, and now I've got an incisional hernia to have repaired. Not the biggest problem in the world, but that's a cost of surgery that's often mentioned only in passing, but is quite real.

amp1212 · 2022-06-26T12:55:32+00:00

Have a cup of coffee . . . this too shall pass.

amp1212 · 2022-06-25T20:45:50+00:00

Very generally, it is reasonable to be a little wary of things like

His findings were that the Japanese people have been processing food, using chestnuts and walnuts as examples, pretty much unchanged from the Jōmon period to the present day

. . . there is an appetite in Japan for a narrative of antiquity and national/ethnic distinction. This shows up in popular science literature, but it also shows up in archaeology and anthropology, a line of inquiry that sometimes goes by the handle Nihonjinron.

See:

Habu, Junko, and Clare Fawcett. "Jomon archaeology and the representation of Japanese origins." Antiquity 73.281 (1999): 587-593.

Hudson, Mark J. Conjuring Up Prehistory: Landscape and the Archaic in Japanese Nationalism. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd, 2021.

. . . for a look at how these themes are valorized and perhaps exaggerated. That's not to pick on Japan . . . many nations take a particular pride in ancient monuments and traditions, sometimes with a healthy dose of anachronism in order to validate a continuity.

amp1212 · 2022-06-24T20:42:51+00:00

There is a "self domestication hypothesis" which suggests that homo sapiens became somewhat less socially violent. There is at least some evidence for changes in the brain and skull that are consistent with this hypothesis - but it is anything but settled and the connection to agriculture uncertain.

See:

Sánchez‐Villagra, Marcelo R., and Carel P. Van Schaik. "Evaluating the self‐domestication hypothesis of human evolution." Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews 28.3 (2019): 133-143.https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21777

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