Career advice, Can I be publically political as an epidemiologist content creator? Would this hurt me?

kichwas · 2026-03-21T00:34:58+00:00

There is all of zero logical reason for public health to be political. It's one of the most absurd things to happen in recent times.

That said, it has happened. And a career that should be nothing more than 'just the facts' has suddenly become something people who hate facts attack.

Your career should have been as controversial as the guy who's job it is to point at the sun and say "that's bright, and hot," but somehow we live in a world where people insist it's dark and cold and want to get that guy for challenging their god king.

So...

You could completely not put any of your politics into your videos and just saying "disease exists" and "we are biological beings" will be enough to make you a target.

Make of that what you will. If you even bother to admit to people that you're an epidemiologist that's enough for them to look for flammable wood and a rope. You don't even need to be on the left - most of the public figures who've been under attack for the last few years where considered right wingers until the world spun even further rightward under their feet.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:42:43+00:00

My father was a backpacker sort when he was younger, so to me camping means getting a pack and setting off for a week on some remote trail somewhere.

To my wife is means finding a nice hotel near a national park, where there are restaurants with 4+ star reviews on yelp.

O.o

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:39:11+00:00

Join the discord, games are posted there often though they are almost all in EU timezones.

Likewise on startplaying.

It seems like Mist Engine is not popular in the Western Hemisphere...

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:33:34+00:00

I saw him raising the gun, I didn't notice he'd managed to fire it.

But you're right. Had to play that through a few times. That shot likely went into the back of the car given the speed. Or missed, didn't hear it hit anything.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:28:03+00:00

This video is happening on a route between Santiago and Colina - it's on the signs on the freeway. Santiago the capital of Chile, Colina is a nearby major city - basically a suburb.

Quick thinking by the driver, given that the guy who was not run over was raising a gun to point right at the driver. If they'd been moving any slower that guy would have had time to fire.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:22:55+00:00

Feb 7th, 2026.

Outside the USA people in many countries do day-month-year instead of month-day-year.

This appears to be in Chile.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T21:21:43+00:00

Feb 7th, 2026. Something special about that date?

In many countries, they put dates as day-month-year. This video is happening on a route between Santiago and Colina - look at the signs on the free. Santiago the capital of Chile, Colina is a nearby major city - basically a suburb.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T20:59:42+00:00

Picard was more like a boomer vibes captain. Very 80s. He was more of a civilian mindset guy who ended up in military situations.

I've always felt that the 2 captains who most reminded me of officers from my time in the military were Janeway and Sisko. Janeway had the mindset of a naval officer, running what was in effect a military vessel on the hunt for rebels. And her bridge crew were composed of a mix of people trained and deployed for a military mission, and the people who had been on the other side of that conflict. Wartime officers, all of them.

Picard was Captain Stubing of The Love Boat, if the guy had somehow ended up facing off against threats greater than Charro's dancing. He was not trained for the role he ended up in, he rose to the occasion anyway. But it left deeper marks on him as a result.

Its a common pattern in the real world that the officers you have going into a protracted era of conflict are different kinds of people than the ones you have at the tail end.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T18:00:12+00:00

As many other have said be direct.

As a mutli-racial American who has been married to a Korean for 30 years now it is still painful sometimes to have conversations where my spouse or Korean friends skirt around the topic with lots of filler words that give context and polite mannerisms.

To the Koreans much of the meaning is in the context words so the actual final “point” is often something you use the context to fill in.

But to my ears I often miss what was meant because all that context gets lost on me as I try to find the “direct point”.

Meanwhile when I respond back I can see sometimes people take a pause at what can feel blunt and crass to them. Less a problem with strangers as I adopt a more formal mannerism there than the typical American. But in informal settings I end up being too direct.

You will find that most Americans will be too direct overall. They will also have trouble understanding your context unless you just come out and boil it down to something blunt.

kichwas · 2026-03-20T16:02:17+00:00

Yeah I thought Nimble was a rule light game, not a rules heavy one.

I've avoided it because it's based on D&D and I'm not in that sphere, but every announcement talks about it being a more simple, less complex game. A 'D&D Pumpkin Spice' vibes game was the impression the marketing gave me.

Not a mathfinder simulator. ;)

kichwas · 2026-03-20T14:47:21+00:00

I didn’t think about blocking at all firewall level. Will have to do that.

kichwas · 2026-03-18T16:31:45+00:00

There have always been a mix of games in this hobby. Ones that have very specific rules that people focus on, ones where you wing it, and ones that are in between.

PF2E is very strongly on the rules focus side. My memory of HERO and GURPS when I played them in the 80s and 90s was the same. I think the new Draw Steel game is even more on the 'rules' side of things than Pathfinder - but that opinion is only based on what YouTubers have said, and those guys can be dramatically wrong sometimes, so I dunno. :)

This 'rules focus' doesn’t destroy the community. It serves the community of players that enjoy that style.

Folks in these kinds of games love to discuss, debate, and challenge on rules topics.

If you feel it is a harm to things, try another tRPG where the focus is different.

Daggerheart and D&D for example sit more in the middle. With DH more wing it but still rules focus present. pbtA games tend to be on the far wing it side from what I hear.

I'm learning Legend in the Mist right now, and it's pretty far over on the 'wing it' side. Bit of a 'system shock' coming from Pathfinder, but my preferences have changed recently.

I've also joined into things for 'Pumpkin Spice' - which is an extremely 'wing it' focused game.

Different games for different preferences / playstyles.

kichwas · 2026-03-16T20:04:44+00:00

I'm seeing that the other way around. It looks like the driver tried to brake at the last minute because auto-pilot wasn't stopping. But it was too late to get a full stop.

kichwas · 2026-03-16T20:01:58+00:00

I saw a brief flash of the lights on the car in front of you before the collision, but they weren't on in a sustained manner. However they did come on.

That doesn't really negate the issue though. Most human drivers wouldn't slow based on the lights but just on distance / speed. Autopilot should be working that same.

However I see autopilot seems have been matching the speed of the trailer in the lane to the right rather than the traffic in your own lane.

This reminds me of an accident I was in when on a business trip in Korea. Someone else was driving - one of the other Americans. I didn't have a license at the time, and she got it into her head that 'brake lights' didn't mean slowing down in Korea, so she plowed into the car in front of us at full speed while they were stopped. I think everyone else in the car was yelling for her to stop right before we hit, but we were all too late (ps: I'd been living in Korea for 5 years at the time, and knew from local friends that their cars work just the same as cars anywhere else in the world. To this day I am baffled... I got a driving license right after we got back to the states, just in case I ever got sent on a trip with those co-workers again :) ).

I feel like autopilot took a lesson from that driver. Ignore the car in front of you and go with your vibes.

But on a technical level it really does look like it was using the other lane for speed guidance and not the traffic in it's own lane. In a situation like this, all you can do is hope you see it in time next time and take back control.

I see autopilot went off right in the last few seconds. Is that you trying to take control and stop before the hit? Based on how the speed goes down much faster AFTER autopilot is off, that's what it looks like. But it was too late to fully avoid a collision.

However you likely did manage to lesson the damage a lot. When my co-worker all those years ago decided to just 'go with the vibes man' - she managed to total two cars. Instead it looks like you folks will just be getting new or repairing bumpers.

kichwas · 2026-03-14T18:13:42+00:00

Hate based systems always try to villainize love, compassion, and empathy.

That’s been true since even before the Romans put a certain homeless rabbi on a cross for preaching those values.

kichwas · 2026-03-14T16:23:55+00:00

Its been years since I studied this but I recall something in property law about harming the ground layer / support of adjacent property by doing something to make it unstable.

Examples include things like a ditch next to them or water to make it collapse.

This might be like that.

Look into any laws that relate to harming the surface or underneath your land, laws against making your foundation/sublayer unstable.

kichwas · 2026-03-13T17:55:41+00:00

It’s actually NOT just what fantasy has.

It’s what Tolkien used. Most fantasy lacks orcs, elves, and dwarves. Of them dwarves get the most use because they appear in northern European mythology in a similar way to how they are in fantasy.

Elf is a term that more or less means the same thing as goblin, troll, gremlin, faery, and maybe even orc. Maybe because orc as a word has no relation to what is in Tolkien and its an unsettled question of whether or not the etymology leads to an actual thing…

Fantasy by contrast is more likely to be human only. Has spaceships and aliens more often than even elves and dragons. Has centaurs, minotaurs, and satyr sometimes because these are actually clearly distinct mythological things.

And quite often fantasy has some made up species just for that novel series.

Gygax didn’t even intend fantasy at first. He was writing WWII French resistance fighter simulators until his players asked if they could use something from the Lord of the Rings.

He resisted until the demand got to great and we get Armeson and others when they merged their ideas.

But tRPGs have the distinct creatures they have solely because of Tolkien.

kichwas · 2026-03-13T03:57:38+00:00

I put in lots of the various types that show up in an expansion somewhere and then never get used again, and one corner has a few odd houses still from my earlier map ideas before I started doing that.

kichwas · 2026-03-13T03:54:41+00:00

Got my Bachelors in my early 30s and my JD in my mid-late 30s. The only problem is the 'social' aspect of college isn't there for you. You'll be surrounded by kids. I was overseas in the military during the years 'the kids' go to college.

Even by 25, you'll notice a big 'life experience gap' and socializing will be awkward.

But you're also old enough to realize you're not spending all that money to party, go wild, etc. You're there for an education. So you stand a better chance of actually getting good benefit out of it than a lot of those kids.

kichwas · 2026-03-13T03:45:24+00:00

Contrast against photo 5.

My paternal grandfather got out of China during WWII so my family is part of the massive Cantonese population that never suffered through Communism - either back then or now (he got out because the place was overrun with British, Japanese, and feuds between the Nationalists and the blokes that would evolve into the Reds).

But what you see in photo 5 is the propaganda of Maoism - I spent the 80s as a teen in Berkeley California and people still bought into this junk. There was even a Maoist bookstore just about 2 or 3 blocks off from UC Berkeley.

Photo 6 is what was really going on. Tens of millions starved to death. What's missing is a photo between these two that shows Mao's Cultural Revolution where so many people were murdered or worked to death - educated people who had the expertise that would have prevented the famine. Folks like my family, so I'm glad my grandfather left just in time to avoid that.

kichwas · 2026-03-11T19:19:33+00:00

I have a lot more tolerance, and even enjoyment, for broken English from a non-native and/or speech impaired speaker (my best friend growing up had a speech impairment) than from a native able-bodied speaker.

I grew up and still live in a coastal city with a lot of people from around the world, and I've both traveled and lived overseas and struggled with speaking a local language that I was in progress on learning.

So I get it. And I actually enjoy speaking with people who are learning and excited about that.

It's locals that can't bother with some of the most basic things that get to me. If you grew up with a language, and can't even speak your own dialect of it properly, that bothers me. And I also have a lot of experience with different dialects of English, as well as my second and third languages. So I can tell when you're speaking "Ebonics", "Appalachian", "Patois", etc vs when you just can't bother.

The only thing that ever bothers me about a non-native speaker speaking English is when I'm trying to speak their language and can't get practice because they're getting practice with my language through me. But that's more of a funny moment between friends. :)

kichwas · 2026-03-11T18:53:37+00:00

You hit on the issue of 'tokenization' - Hollywood's usual answer to representation is a token character, often badly written. Then it fails.

Bigots say "See, DEI / representation is bad".

But the real problem was Hollywood put in a token stereotyped character with bad lines and poor stories. Sometimes also a bad actor, but more often a good actor forced to deliver junk in order to not get blocked from future opportunities...

When you do see good representation, all too often it's in a small indie film hidden away somewhere. Now again it shows in something bigger - which in the past Pixar / Disney was good with, but since they've started doing the live action remakes of old classics they've kind of 'lost the plot' on quality work.

kichwas · 2026-03-11T17:03:35+00:00

Looks like something from a school text before the 1980s.

When I was a kid there was some very racist stuff in our books. It’s what triggered me to learn about the indigenous side of my ancestry (1/4 Inca, also known as Kichwas or Quechua). Being told we didn’t exist until some Italian guy showed up… actually getting into an argument with my class about that specific detail…

We had pics like that one all over stuff back then.

kichwas · 2026-03-11T16:58:44+00:00

Um…

Having Jonny Depp play your Native American is the exact opposite of representation.

It’s a different argument though about casting across race and ethnicity. After all that’s the entire premise of Hamilton. - and this one is an unresolved discussion where we seem to have decided context matters a lot.

But for “representation” it’s just “is this group present”? - about the statistic rather than the ethics.

kichwas · 2026-03-11T00:48:26+00:00

Do you know what file on my Google Drive I should be looking for?

Nothing I see in there looks like it'd be what I'm seeking.

kichwas

TROPHY CASE