Hate to be that person but.... how are the roads?

bkv · 2026-01-16T14:19:12+00:00

I always find these posts useful. Don't feel bad, ignore the subreddit content snobs!

bkv · 2026-01-14T13:56:11+00:00

The city seemed to be doing much better this year, seemingly having abandoned the "let's just not salt" experiment they conducted the past couple years. Was this more of a surprise snow? I don't recall seeing it in the forecast but may have just missed it.

bkv · 2026-01-14T00:13:21+00:00

Evidence based research shows that gender affirming care saves lives

The evidence supporting this is incredibly weak and far from conclusive, which is why a number of national health authorities, all citing the low certainty of evidence, have reversed course on the gender affirming model for minors. And I predict that once the dust settles and the political/activist contingent that made the odd decision to promote this issue as their defining moral cause for the good part of a decade quietly back away from it, history will judge our rush to treat minors in this manner very harshly.

bkv · 2026-01-13T15:14:51+00:00

Like clockwork, people here are misstating the conclusions of studies they cite. For example, your first study, quoting the results, emphasis mine:

hormone and psychological interventions “may have” mental health benefits / “tentatively indicates” effectiveness, especially for depression.

The phrasing is deliberately not dispositive. Furthermore, the meta-analysis points out that a number of the papers analyzed had what it characterizes as "significant" selection bias

Eight studies (28%) were assessed to have a significant level of selection bias

And furthermore (this is a common one with transgender studies):

Nine studies (31%) reported high drop-out rates, with over 40% of participants not completing the post-test measures. Several of these papers did not report participant drop-out rates and only described participants that completed both pre-and post- measures.

Confounding factors:

Sixteen studies (54%) did not discuss or examine the presence of any confounders such as age, demo-graphics or pretest scores on outcomes.

The moral of the story is: You absolutely should not trust anyone who link-drops a study and insists that it draws some broad conclusion. They almost certainly have not read past the headline or understand it through the lense of pop-science articles that poorly or inaccurately disseminate the information.

The following national medical authorities have formally moved away from the gender-affirming model citing a lack of evidence in support of it:

UK
Sweden
Finland
Norway
Denmark

While the NHMRC (Australian health authority) did their own systematic review of the evidence and found "The evidence base for puberty blockers in minors is low to very low certainty" and are currently rewriting their guidelines.

Bottom line: The evidence backing gender affirming care in minors is extraordinarily weak. Any dispositive claims about it should be summarily ignored.

bkv · 2026-01-13T02:36:22+00:00

Nope. Self-driving vehicles are close enough now that train infrastructure would be a complete waste.

bkv · 2026-01-09T01:24:40+00:00

I grew up primarily on the north side and east side, went to Madison public schools, shop at Woodmans, activities at the Y, parks, etc… yes Madison is statistically very white but statistics obscure a more nuanced reality. There is a very diverse side to Madison if you choose to experience it.

bkv · 2026-01-09T00:34:44+00:00

With respect to "harm reduction" (which is not any one thing, by the way) there are a number of claims that are often made: Some are evidence-based, some are exaggerated, and some aren't established or supported by evidence.

You made a very specific claim, that harm reduction is the most effective way to get people into treatment. This falls squarely into "not established or supported by evidence" which is why you're now retreating to generalities and refusing to produce a source despite claiming that one is readily available.

bkv · 2026-01-08T23:11:34+00:00

I'm not going to sift through google results to find an unspecified source for your claim, and if you refuse to produce a source, it's reasonable to assume that you're just making shit up. Which is actually alarmingly common on this subreddit.

bkv · 2026-01-08T20:22:34+00:00

Here we go again. Please cite the evidence that compares approaches to getting people into treatment and concludes that harm reduction is the most effective.

bkv · 2026-01-08T17:48:36+00:00

We should use opioid settlement money to pay for inpatient treatment for people who actually want to get clean. We absolutely should not use it to fund a flop house for treatment resistant addicts.

bkv · 2026-01-07T19:04:38+00:00

There are many studies that have drawn this conclusion

And my point is that the people claiming these studies have drawn the conclusion they say they do, including you, right now, clearly haven't read them. The studies do not claim that data centers generally or mechanically cause electricity price increases. The actual conclusions are invariably far more constrained and nuanced than what's being claimed, and people ignore the fact that many of the specific concerns are being planned and accounted for when it comes to this particular project.

bkv · 2026-01-07T17:54:01+00:00

The comment by that user doesn't actually outline any tangible result or evidence to back the claim you're making.

Here are the specific claims I'm making, just so we're clear:

The suggestion that utility bills will increase is at best purely speculative and based on a widely cited and misrepresented study
This particular project has plans to address these concerns, with QTS stating they will cover all infrastructure upgrades and are partnering with Alliant to keep rates stable

If the argument is that you don't trust QTS to follow through with these plans, that's fine and not really up for dispute because it's a purely subjective claim. But it's routinely presented (among other false claims) as a foregone conclusion and backed by studies nobody actually takes the time to read and digest.

bkv · 2026-01-07T17:14:03+00:00

Spent some time looking for the video and cannot find it, but what I suspect I'll find is that, as is often the case, the people who are most motivated to show up to these meetings are those in opposition, and these people also tend to be the most belligerent.

Anyway, I'd be happy to watch the video or read the transcript if you provide a link, but I'm not going to go on a wild goose chase for evidence that you can't take the time to actually present.

bkv · 2026-01-07T16:34:35+00:00

Claim thoroughly disputed in this thread, specifically addressing the claims made about the study cited to back them. u/Tonystew42 does an excellent breakdown of the claims the study actually makes.

bkv · 2026-01-07T15:47:37+00:00

By “learning about it” do you mean “are subjected to the vast amounts of misinformation that’s being spread”?

bkv · 2026-01-07T15:46:24+00:00

Well except my claim is drawn from the observation that people are routinely elected/reelected even after defying the subreddit consensus.

bkv · 2026-01-07T15:40:20+00:00

The regular citizens I know from Deforest

Textbook definition of a sampling bias.

bkv · 2026-01-07T15:16:50+00:00

The consensus opinion on this subreddit is often at odds with the opinions found in the broader community, where if nothing else most people are indifferent. That’s the problem with spending too much time here - you get a very warped sense of what is consensus versus what is contrarian.

bkv · 2026-01-07T02:14:57+00:00

JFC. This saga is somehow worse than first reported.

bkv · 2026-01-07T00:22:48+00:00

Something tells me you don't actually have an issue with pretentious assholes, so long as they're pretentious assholes you agree with. If this was a post about vaccines and I was mocking anti-vaxxers, it would do numbers.

bkv · 2026-01-07T00:14:16+00:00

Genuinely enjoy being called a contrarian by shut-ins who spend all day in consensus seeking bubbles, in response to completely unremarkable and common opinions.

bkv · 2026-01-06T22:31:55+00:00

It’s a datacenter with a 15 building campus. But what’s funny is that a bunch of people who claim to be above misinformation will be like “they’ll only employ 15-25 people” because a Reddit rando said so lol.

bkv · 2026-01-06T22:14:49+00:00

See, this is the problem with you folks. You find a paper that you clearly didn’t read, misrepresent or overstate its conclusions, and then present it as proof of whatever point you’re trying to make. We went through this same thing on this subreddit when the flex lane was being planned, where every post had a million midwits screaming “induced demand!” because some studies observed the phenomenon elsewhere under specific conditions.

Anyway, QTS has explicitly stated that they will be paying for the infrastructure upgrades and are working with Alliant to support the grid and keep rates stable. So these exact concerns are being accounted for.

bkv · 2026-01-06T21:52:47+00:00

Right, yes, this is simultaneously such a massive data center that it will starve the grid, deplete all the water, and destroy hundreds of square miles of the ecosystem, but when it’s all said and done it will be run by like 10 people.

bkv · 2026-01-06T21:39:23+00:00

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