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I would be very surprised if most people get vitamin d levels measured annually.

I’ve had 5 different primary care doctors across multiple practices in different locations due to moving, changing jobs, and doctors retiring

Every single one of them included Vitamin D testing in the annual checkup.

Two of my jobs in the past few years have had wellness programs that offered free Vitamin D testing along with a couple other things (A1c, lipids)

It’s very common in the United States at least. I know this goes against the “US healthcare bad” narrative but one of the difficulties with our costs is that we get more testing and procedures. Cutting those costs is going to be hard because people like the freedom to have their doctor order common tests


I would say it's probably less "US healthcare bad" and more "US healthcare is bimodal".

At least for the past few years it has been part of my annual physical. I had no idea it was part of the blood test until it came out as being low.

I would be very surprised if anyone got vitamin d levels measured who didn't specifically request it.

The 25-hydroxy vitamin D test (aka: 25(OH)D test) is not part of a lipid panel, comprehensive (nor standard) metabolic panel, or any number of tests I have regularly. Without a specific request, it's unlikely anyone gets tested for this unless maybe you're a psychiatric patient. When I had severe depression in my 20s, a doctor did have this test done.

All of my doctors (due to moves, retirements, etc) have done this for years in the US.

When the topic came up recently at a get together everyone could recall their relative Vitamin D levels (too low, normal) from recent checkups.

It’s common, at least in the US areas where I’ve lived.


It's surprising because so many people are deficient and the treatment is extremely cheap. It's bizarre, it's like if a problem is a big enough problem, medicine says well most people are living with it and washes its hands.

People in particular groups with higher risk of deficiency will be tested every year by many doctors. That practice obviously can't amount to testing every year being the average though.

On one side, sure, there's "overly paternalistic" moderation, but, on the other, there's AI powered revenge porn running rampant, so I'd argue there should be at least some moderation.

Calling a juvenile bikini edit "AI-powered revenge porn" is incorrect by definition. Revenge porn involves the non-consensual distribution of real, explicit sexual imagery of an identifiable person with the intent to cause harm.

Lumping sophomoric image edits into that category is exactly the kind of moral and definitional inflation being actively used to manufacture pretext for suppressing speech under the guise of "moderation."


You're right, we must be accurate in our terms, but that misclassifcation isn't worse than the act itself. The generation of deepfake non-consensual sexual images isn't revenge porn, because the woman in the image didn't even given initial consent. It being used to harass women is still a problem and is the sort of thing that requires moderation. It's not "sophomoric", it's exploitative and, in some states, illegal.

You’ve agreed this isn’t revenge porn. The case for moderation must stand or fall under the correct classification.

Harm has not been demonstrated. Annoyance or offense is not injury, and discomfort is not exploitation. Without evidence of systematic, material harm -- and without showing that enforcement would not introduce greater error and speech suppression -- the justification for moderation fails. Vague claims of illegality are irrelevant. A non-explicit image edit is not criminal in any US jurisdiction absent additional elements such as explicit sexual content, fraud, extortion, or targeted harassment; invoking “illegal in some states” -- without naming conduct and statute -- is just noise.

"Put them in a bikini" is closer to low-effort mockery than to any recognized category of sexual harm. The level of alarm being applied here is grossly disproportionate to the act itself and is merely being used as a pretext for broader intervention.


> invoking “illegal in some states” -- without naming conduct and statute -- is just noise.

Ok, sure[1]. I don't know why I am, but I'm surprised people are going to bat for this. Where is your line, exactly? Is it legality? Is it further along?

[1] https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/01/california...


That article doesn’t contradict the point. The relevant laws hinge on explicit sexual content, nudity, or sexual acts, plus specific elements like intent or reckless facilitation. A non-explicit "put them in a bikini" image does not meet that threshold on its own. If prosecutors continue to argue otherwise, that theory will have to survive First Amendment scrutiny. I wish them the best of luck in that endeavor and look forward to its resolution.

>> The level of alarm being applied here is grossly disproportionate to the act itself and is merely being used as a pretext for broader intervention.

> I don't know why I am, but I'm surprised people are going to bat for this. Where is your line, exactly? Is it legality? Is it further along?

If something is illegal, that’s a clear boundary and the appropriate place for enforcement. If it’s legal, the burden is on anyone arguing for restriction to explain why speech controls are justified despite that -- what concrete harm exists, why existing law is insufficient, and why the remedy won’t create more error or suppression than it prevents.

Absent that showing, "this feels bad" or "this is alarming" isn’t a standard.


Regardless, it was weird to try to convert that into a "I paid" check-mark.

How big is the business?

Commensurate to the actual cost?

Certainly commensurate to the price. It's up to the companies to bring the cost under the price.

AFAICT, fears of the marginal costs of LLM inference being high are dramatically overblown. All the "water" concerns are outlandish, for one—a day of moderately heavy LLM usage consumes on the order of one glass of water, compared to a baseline consumption of 1000 glasses/day for a modern human. And the water usage of a data center is approximately the same as agriculture per acre.


I don't think anyone has a single agreed upon number for the water consumption, with the higher estimates focusing on a lot of wider externalities and the lower estimates ignoring them, such as ignoring the cost of training.

it doesn't have to be agreed upon but even the largest estimates don't come even close to how much corn farms use

> The water usage of 260 square miles of irrigated corn farms, equivalent to 1% of America’s total irrigated corn.

https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake...

Roughly 1% of corn is used for actual food consumption btw.


Compared to the fair market cost of human labor? It might be thousands of times more efficient.

Duplicate story. Previous discussion here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46735545

Edit: Nevermind.


No it isn't. This is an evolution of that story.

I could have sworn "move fast and break things" existed before AI.

It did, but AI redefined the term "fast"

It really feels like a you problem if you're banning someone for writing prompts like my Aunt Gladys writes texts.

I think you're missing the actual problem. It's not great that idiots now have the power to photoshop images, the real problem is that those idiots who would do that have been given the power to run the country.

I am quite aware of the problem. Idiots have always run the country.

Not like this. Not so bald-faced, never so unabashed.

Yeah, this reads as the oligarchy further consolidating power.

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