But do my minors appreciate this delicacy? Nope, of course not...

Yay my origami question has a pretty high view for such a short time in a private beta

or is it public beta now?

Public, I think.

@Jay Been public for a few days... Friday, I think....

gotcha

So, wow, Tuesday...

so exactly a week ago

Yep.

almost to the hour lol

It's on the HNQ, even: stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot

oooh im on HNQ? cool I dont think i've been on it before. or at least not that i was aware of

Congrats :D

hehe thanks

@Catija And you might get to be a mod!

@Jefromi i saw her nomination. when does voting start?

@Jefromi Well, I have an upvote from at least one CM :P Hopefully the others agree. I was hoping that this might be the case... I knew my chances would be better on a Beta site.

@Jay It's pro-tem, not an election.

@Jefromi oh

so who decides?

CMs pick.

i see

@Jay No "election" per se... the CMs appoint people they like... so they can completely ignore the nominations post if they want.

Maybe not a perfect system but elections would be a mess, everyone's still new, not a ton of users, etc.

And they generally manage to pick sane people.

@Catija I dont mean to doubt your ability to do the job but aren't you slightly concerned about when the baby is due?

Particularly since they take their entire network experience into account rather than only their performance on that one site.

@Jay Sure... but everyone has those sorts of things in their life... all of the people who are running who I've talked to have kids and jobs and stuff... that's why there's three mods, not just one.

I guess i just have too many friends who are becoming mothers recently. And the number 1 complaint is not getting enough sleep

Also it's 100% okay to take vacation from moderating.

@Jay yup - but if you're up anyway, you can just as well nurse in front of the computer or rock your baby to sleep at your desk. (Ask me how I know...)

Blegh i hate getting emails asking me to donate blood.

Makes me angry I cant donate blood for such a stupid reason

@Jay I feel your pain. They had the bloodmobile here last week and I couldn't either... though, your reason (if it's the reason I think it is) is stupider.

to be fair, they updated from a life time ban to just a 12 month ban. But im not going to stop having sex for 12 months just so i can donate blood.

You don't have to feel pressured to donate blood just because you saw the advert. There are many other ways to give back to society, and you are certainly using them more than others I know.

@Jay Yep, that's the reason I was thinking... the ban is still stupid.

Also, the reason is not all that stupid.

So, they justify it by saying that it's correlated with STI risk (which is true) but I'm not 100% sure that they've fairly eliminated other things with similar levels of STI risk.

It is a logistically easy way to mitigate a risk which may have a low chance of happening but is very high on the dread scale.

@rumtscho Maybe not back in the 70s and 80s... but it is now. "let's ban a group of men from donating blood just because of their sexual preferences"... but not every other group of potentially high-risk donators...

and in risk management, the dread factor beats the hazard factor

I don't think there is a single question on the quiz in the vein of "how many partners have you had" for heterosexual people.

@Catija which other groups have a similarly high risk, is similarly easy to define, and is not banned?

They just ask men if they've had sex with other men at all, and everyone if they've exchanged drugs or money for sex.

@rumtscho Anyone in their 20s-30s who has multiple sexual partners? My dad and his husband can't give blood even though they've been together for 20 years... how is that more high-risk than my husband and I?

I know you need specific questions so it's not super simple, but I'm sure there is something you could come up with that gets you a good correlation.

I must admit I am not all that versed in blood donation rules, but if you are going to make a question of discrimination out of it, I could imagine that stopping the other high risk groups is a better answer than allowing men who have sex with men to donate.

@Jefromi Generically, "how many partners have you had unprotected sex with in the past year?" Regardless of gender..

@Catija You would need to look into the statistics for that.

I figure especially given that most people are not gay men, there's something to be gained from weeding out people who've engaged in risky behavior.

@Catija Hmm. First, at how many would you make the cut? Zero? Second, this question seems much more likely to get wrong answers than the other one.

Again no idea exactly what the question would be, but I doubt it's hopeless.

"Have you had unprotected sex with more than one person in the last year?"

I know, people can still get it wrong (people think the pill is protection, etc), but presumably it still has screening value.

Of course you need statistics to make a cutoff but treating gay men with such out-of-date statistical info isn't a good solution.

I also tend to believe that even if it's more work, it's worth extra effort to try to be more fair, rather than targeting minorities just because it's easy.

> Although MSM represent about 4% of the male population in the United States, in 2010, MSM accounted for 78% of new HIV infections among males and 63% of all new infections.

@Catija I think the stats for this particular question are actually still good in terms of preventing contaminated blood (they did review it).

The problem is more that it's unfair in context.

@rumtscho yes, but 78% of how many cases?

@Catija a bit below 30k

cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/overview/ataglance.html

The statistics are quite sound - it is a very high risk group. And this is valid today, not only decades ago.

30K out of 152 million? That's a tiny percentage.

Wait, are you saying that they just shouldn't screen for HIV at all?

You could try defining less risky subgroups such as monogamous MSM, but this makes it more complicated, both in setting up the prediction model and in getting out good data.

@Jefromi Who? That's silly... of course they should screen for it... but treating the entire group of men as if they have HIV just because they have sex with other men seems a bit absurd.

but else, it makes very good sense from a pure risk management point of view, even though it touches on sensible subjects and is unfair for some people.

I definitely think it's worth the effort to try to do such things (and I don't know how hard they tried in the recent re-evaluation), because we kind of have an obligation not to heap additional unfair treatment on minorities.

@Catija They are not treating them as if they have HIV.

@rumtscho By banning them from donating, yes, they are.

@Catija You. Given that we want to screen for HIV, the goal is to eliminate as many of the potential cases as possible.

So as long as gay males account for most of that risk, that's going to be an obvious place to look for screening.

I'm not saying the current version of the question is the best version.

@Catija No. They are treating them as having a higher chance to have HIV than others, creating very high costs of risk management. They just decide to avoid these costs.

And I don't think that the other related screening questions are the best version either.

But asking something about having sex with men is inevitable here.

HIV tests aren't accurate enough to just test blood after donation.

Wow, the US uses 43k units of blood a day.

Or 36k, depending which site I look at.

> Although an estimated 38 percent of the U.S. population is eligible to donate blood at any given time, less than 10% of that eligible population actually do each year.

@rumtscho They still have to test all of the blood regardless... right? They're not going to actually trust what the people who donate tell them... lots of people don't even know that they have these diseases.

@Catija Right but the HIV tests aren't completely accurate.

That's an interesting number. 62% seem to be uneligible. And only 4% are estimated to be MSM. So, it's not that MSM are singled out for eligibility, there must be many other reasons too.

I don't know what the actual number is, but even if it's 1% false negatives, that can easily result in actual people getting HIV if they don't pre-screen.

@rumtscho Well, MSM are singled out in terms of HIV screening.

Also, a person shouldn't feel like it is normal to be eligible and it is a rare thing to be pronounced ineligible. It seems that the normal thing is to not be eligible.

Over 20% of the population is too young to donate.

Presumably another 10-20% is old enough that they're likely to not meet criteria one way or another health-wise?

Women who are pregnant or who have recently been pregnant are not allowed to donate.

@Jefromi They are removed from the pool due to the higher chance of having HIV, but others are removed from the pool for other reasons.

@rumtscho Yes, that's my point.

Weak people, people with transmissible diseases, people with conditions that affect blood quality...

Also they ask if you've had sex with anyone who fails any of the eligibility criteria.

So the MSM thing is actually a bit broader than it sounds.

In fact, some sort of new guideline (in Texas, anyway) seems to imply that any woman who has ever been pregnant should consider whether donation is a good idea... I didn't see the questionnaire that my husband filled out recently when he donated but there was something about having been pregnant ever in there.

Perhaps they could change the question into something more precise than the blunt MSM question.

But I don't get why some gays get so upset about this.

It's not a privilege.

@Cerberus a more precise question doesn't necessarily get you more precise data

You know what I mean.

Having the question at all doesn't necessarily get you correct info. How many people give blood and lie?

@Cerberus It's not about blood donation being a privilege, it's more about whether people in power are being lazy about how they treat minorities.

If it's possible to allow more gay donors in without increasing risk, then they really should do it.

@Catija people who develop questionnaires include the probability of false information into their calculations. They test for it. And different types of question get different false answer rates.

@Jefromi Well, I don't get why people get upset about lacking something that brings no advantage.

I don't think "brings no advantage" is accurate.

Being able to help people is an advantage.

No material advantage, then.

@Cerberus Wanting to be able to help the people in their communities who are dying without sufficient blood resources?

Sometimes even a very direct one, because you can donate blood on behalf of someone.

They have the same restrictions for platelet donations, don't they? And people get paid for that.

Meh, you know what I mean.

Yes, we know what you mean, and we don't think it's an accurate reflection of what people care about.

I haven't seen data on that particular questionnaire, but I have some experience in psychometry, having developed questionnaires myself and read books on the psychology of survey responders. My intuition is that something like "have you had unprotected sex in the past year" will get significantly more false answers than "have you had sex with a man last year".

@rumtscho I'd believe it. But that doesn't mean it can't be a useful question.

Maybe it really isn't, dunno.

I don't think it helps society if people get more upset about less material things than about more material things.

And also, let's do some back of the envelope calculation. Assume that a MSM has 10 times more risk to be infected than another person (my calculation would also work if the number is 5 times more or 20 times more, let's go with 10).

They also have the two-barcode system... right? If you lied, you put a different bar code on the blood after it's drawn?

It polarises.

Now you're drifting into the category of only solving the most important problem, and ignoring less important ones.

@rumtscho I don't think we need to be convinced that the current question is a useful one, probably one of the most useful ones.

Assume that there are 4% of MSM in the population and 50% of them are monogamous, and that they have the same donation rate as the rest of the population.

I'm really just arguing that it's worth spending extra effort to be more fair to people who already get the short end of the stick in society.

If they would allow donations from monogamous MSM, they would gain 2% more blood.

Yes, but people shouldn't get too upset about this.

@Cerberus Yup, and I agreed with that.

I don't agree with "why do people get upset", though.

I understand that you personally don't get offended by much of anything.

But not everyone is that way.

But the risk would inevitably go up, even though it won't be the whole 10 times more risk. Even if it only goes up by 50%, that's a lot of risk for 2% more blood.

The reflex to always get angry and express entitlement is I think not good for society.

It's not that black and white.

And that's only the chance calculation, imagine the headlines if a person gets infected.

It's not always get angry and express entitlement.

And then put on top of that the costs of the additional risk management.

From a purely economic point of view, it makes no sense to change the situation.

It depends on how much it would cost to research and devise new questions.

If rumtscho's back of the envelope calculations are right here, then yes, the current situation might make sense, and that would be a convincing reason people shouldn't get upset about it.

But absent that explanation, it's totally reasonable for people to not be happy about it.

Or they should just not get upset about it in the first place, and rather inquire about the reasons behind it, and calmly propose a change if reasonably possible.

And not accuse other, specific people of discrimination all the time.

Now you can see a moral problem in it, but I really don't see "donating blood" as an innate right people have to fight for. Even though I disagree with the "you get nothin out of it" idea, it is just one of many possible forms of altruism.

@Cerberus Please don't put words into my mouth.

?

I was never talking about you.

okay, then in others who I'm currently defending.

I'm talking about the people who write angry, unresearched letters to the newspapers.

About this subject.

Okay, those people are wrong.

But all the people who are upset, and express that, while also being fairly calm and asking for change, they are not wrong.

You're coming across as dismissing basically everyone who has any emotional reaction to this sort of thing at all.

I still think it is better not to get upset at all about this.

Perhaps the world would be better if no one were ever upset about anything, but that's not the world we live in.

Then I am glad we agree hehe.

And so it's unproductive to point that out at every turn.

There are a lot of issues in the world that are emotionally meaningful to people, and the only way to make progress on them is to acknowledge and work with people, including those emotions.

To say it'd be better if they just weren't upset is to dismiss their concerns.

Perhaps we don't disagree on a fundamental level.

@rumtscho I generally agree, but at the same time, I think we also should try to be as fair as possible about things even when they aren't innate rights.

So, if it's not possible to be more fair on this subject, okay, that sucks. If it is, we should definitely try. And the way the FDA (for example) has spoken about this hasn't given me great confidence that they've actually been fair in their evaluations - but maybe they have.

@Jefromi yes, that's right. Still, fairness is a very difficult concept.

Also I am not sure that people who only see the "I am not allowed to do what I want because I am gay" appreciate all the intricacies of the situation.

Sure, but I think most people have a more nuanced view than that.

Imagine that somebody gets infected through donated blood, and this can somehow be traced back to a gay donor (don't ask me how the tracing happens. But hospitals are extremely good on recording data nowadays).

Maybe not as nuanced as they should, of course.

Of course, the hospital and the red cross will suffer.

But what is more, the gay hate as a whole will grow up to new levels.

> The risk for acquiring HIV infection through blood transfusion today is estimated conservatively to be one in 1.5 million, based on 2007--2008 data (2). This report describes the first U.S. case of transfusion-transmitted HIV infection reported to CDC since 2002 (3).

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5941a3.htm

> During his interview, the donor reported he was married but had sex with both men and women outside of his marriage, including just before his June 2008 donation. He indicated that the sex often was anonymous and occurred while he was intoxicated.

so the broad ban has a protective side people seem to forget.

Honestly, the government is pretty crappy at saying stuff in a way that doesn't sound discriminatory. That whole "if you're female and you're not on birth control, you shouldn't drink" thing was a fiasco.

Yeah, I know. But you have to be careful about protecting minorities like that.

@Catija I guess so, but on the other hand, how do you see "if you're female and you're not using any form of contraception and don't want to get pregnant, you shouldn't have sex"?

I think in that case, the CDC was relatively sane, and the media was responsible for a lot of the discriminatory-sounding phrasings.

Why can't we just all get along?

does dance and song

@Jefromi still, efficiency generally beats fairness in modern society, and that is broadly accepted.

@rumtscho I think it's a lot less accepted by minorities.

@Jefromi the fact that there is a minority involved here is purely accidental though.

Mostly, yeah.

the unfairness is not caused by them being a minority who has traditionally been a subject of discrimination.

You have to keep in mind, though, that minorities face a lot of unfairness across the board.

So when there's a potential opportunity to reduce that unfairness in one area, whether or not it's an "accident", it's often a really good idea.

So I hesitate very much in applying a "discrimination" yardstick to the situation.

I'm not saying this is discrimination.

But not discrimination doesn't mean not worth fixing.

No, but I have the feeling that it is the whiff of discrimination which makes it an issue in the first place.

Sure, I generally agree with that. Still doesn't mean not worth fixing.

Im sorry, i know i was the one who sorta brought this up but lets talking about something less polarizing

@Jay I think we mostly agree, actually.

@Jefromi Even when I was trying to get pregnant, I knew that there were times I could be certain that it was safe to drink... and I would drink then, in extreme moderation...

Let's say that I want to send a letter to somebody who lives a kilometer away from me. The postman could take it from my outbox and bring it to their inbox on the same day.

@Catija Okay, sure, the none vs a little bit part, that part not so good :)

Usually, people in the political centre are against discrimination, and they will support those on the far left who fight it. But, when the far left fight a case of what they see as discrimination but the centre as insignificant or legitimate, they risk losing the support of the centre for the whole fight against discrimination. That's why I think moderation is advisable if you want to change society.

But in the name of efficiency, all letters from outboxes are brought to the main post office, sorted overnight, and given to the postmen on the next day.

@rumtscho I'm really not trying to say everything has to be fair.

I'm merely saying it's worth making extra efforts where feasible, in particular for people who have an undue burden of unfair treatment.

@Cerberus and I'm not saying the far left should fight over every last instance of discrimination.

@Jay OMG you've destroyed the roooom! Seriously, I think the polarisation is under control and people are OK with it.

@Jefromi I agree with that part completely.

@Jefromi OK good.

@Jefromi I agree, though not if it the gain is small and there is a cost.

"where feasible"

I guess the difference in my position here is from my different evaluation of the costs/feasibility vs. the size of unfairness in this one case.

But we're probably all agreed in principle.

Our estimations of the feasibility may differ.

I have gotten the impression that there might be room for a wee bit more fairness here without much additional risk, and would like to see the FDA really address that, that's all.

@Jefromi I suppose that they have made some steps... removing the lifetime ban in place of a one-year ban.

(and maybe they even have and I'm just not giving them enough credit)

I am assuming that the FDA or CDC or whoever is responsible has done a better feasibility analysis than I did when deciding on their criteria, and that they knew what they are doing. Maybe that's too strong of an assumption given that they are government agencies :)

I think my doubts come less from general government incompetence and more from my impressions of their incentives and society's biases as a whole.

Hm, from wiki:

> In the United States in 2005, MSM, African Americans, and persons engaging in high-risk heterosexual behavior accounted for respectively 49%, 49%, and 32% of new HIV diagnoses.

sure :) Never assume incompetence to explain behavior which can be explain by incentives!

Yes... I'm sure that it's solace to some people to know that the blood they're receiving doesn't come from someone they find morally repulsive... which I find reprehensible... but people are stupid.

@Catija That's not really what I meant, just that I don't think overall people are going to spend a lot of effort trying to do right by people they might have subtle biases against.

@Catija the kind of people who find it repulsive to get blood from somebody who had gay sex yesterday are probably just as repulsed about getting blood from somebody who had gay sex a year ago.

I'm not trying to say that's what you meant... it's what I think of because I've seen the hateful, bigoted things people say.

@rumtscho And I'm sure that when the ban was reduced, they spoke out against it.

Whoa. And apparently less than 1% of donations are from African Americans or Hispanics.

@Catija maybe they did, but the ban reduction was still enacted. Which is a good sign that the people who make decisions about the ban are not overly concerned with such opinions.

@Jefromi That's not surprising at all. Generosity is a feeling which changes with the way you perceive your social status and your access to resources as a whole. Somebody who is poor is unlikely to be generous even with things he can replenish easily.

Scientists seldom are... real ones, anyways. It's more of a trust but verify thing... I don't know they're being discriminatory so much as I don't think they're doing enough to explain why they're making the restrictions they are and to explain that they're not ignoring other risky groups... in a way that you don't have to be a scientist to understand.

@Catija good point.

@rumtscho Perhaps that's why (though I'd guess more about free time than generosity), but anyway my point was more looking at that in combination with the HIV infection rates.

@Jefromi I can imagine several interpretations here, which one did you have in mind?

Naively, you wouldn't lose many donors and you'd cut HIV risk dramatically if you banned African American donors, but I don't think that's an option on the table. (and I'm glad it's not)

(I'm aware it affects more eligible donors.)

How is hotness points generated in NHQ?

@Jay "arbitrary"!

My question is now 48.3 hot points and on the first page of HNQ! Whooo

I can find the meta question though

I never knew about the hot points

I think that the views from the own site is what counts most in the formula

If you hover your mouse over a HNQ you can see the points

but it must be at least normalized in some way. I suspect it alsoincludes other metrics.

Hover where?

In the right side panel on the main page, it doesn't show any points for me

on the HNQ site itself

stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot

i guess not site, but section

ah, it was the votes, not the views, which count.

So that means it's easier for new beta sites to get stuff on the HNQ... which sounds like a good way to get them some attention. :D

Yea

I think the idea is more that it's equally easy for all sites, regardless of size.

So that basically everyone can get on there.

Lol I dont know why i feel so disproportionately proud for being on HNQ haha

Otherwise SO would have every question on there.

I've never had a question... you should be proud.

Congratulations for getting it there!It is a nice question too.

Im actually really excited to see if I can easily source from palm fronds

@Catija ask more questions!

@Jefromi I don't like questions... except on Meta.

@Catija gonna quote that on your pro-tem nomination post!!!

HA... I have two questions on SA and 8 on SA meta. One question on M&TV and 17 on M&TV meta... Yep...

@Jefromi Asking questions on the main site is not really something that counts against you as a mod...

37 questions on MSE :D That's more than all of the others combined, I'm pretty sure.

I put some sous vide chicken breast in my cast iron skillet for a minute or two - my first time using the cast iron skillet. now it looks a lot lighter where the chicken breast was, even after rubbing a bit of oil on it again afterwards. is that normal?

what do you mean by lighter?

chicken breast residue?

grey iron laid bare?

Pics?

also, did you use sufficient oil and did you preheat the pan well before putting the chicken breast on it?

protein is a very sticky thing

@rumtscho "Somebody who is poor is unlikely to be generous even with things he can replenish easily.": I actually believe that is not true, that poor people donate just as much as rich people, comparatively. This has been researched.

As much as social psychology can be trusted, of course.

if you fry it the wrong way on newly seasoned cast iron, it can very well flake off some seasoning.

I do think that donating blood is culturally transmissive: if your peers do it, you're much more likely to acquire the idea.

So if there exists a culture of blood-giving among white people, that is likely to propagate itself.

@Cerberus Interesting. I haven't seen research data on this, but have observed both rich and poor people, and also ones who transitioned from poor to rich (and became more generous after doing so).

It also seems likely that it is related with education.

@Cerberus indeed, this sounds like good explanations too.

I can't say what this is, but it is not seasoning flaked off

theguardian.com/society/2001/dec/21/voluntarysector.fundraising

> The poor are more generous than the rich when it comes to giving to good causes, according to research which challenges the "Robin Hood" myth of charity as an agent of redistribution.

maybe my definition of "rich" and "poor" was badly chosen. I don't really know rich people.

@Catija how do you tell a question is a HNQ without actually looking for it on HNQ?

Well, I don't think money and blood are comparable.

I just sought to debunk that sentence of yours that I quoted.

I know people who are poor in the sense of having to choose between paying the electricity bill and the rent, and people who are rich in the sense of being middle class people in a Western society who can afford a bit of luxury in their lives.