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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 10h

And fuzzy alpaca vest is done! I quilted the knitting to the flannel lining and it worked very well. I think it will keep the knit from stretching out over time.
#knitting

Fuzzy light tan colour alpaca vest with dark buttons laying flat on a table

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 11h

Thanks! Good point!

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

damn it typo - like the carbon calculators 2.0

(which I learned about from @amywestervelt.bsky.social laist.com/news/npr-new...).

How Big Oil helped push the idea of a 'carbon footprint'

Your carbon footprint helps you identify actions you can take to personally fight climate change. It also shifts responsibility away from petrochemical companies. If that seems convenient for Big Oil,...

laist.com

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

retweeting because this is buried at the end of a too long tweet thread but I believe 100% that overusing warning labels is partially about downloading systemic issues including pollution and failure of health care/public policy onto individuals.

its like the carbon calculation 2.0

Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

The vast vast vast majority of ppl who see this warning label will never do this calculation. Hell I've done the calculation and I still feel guilty.

And it's also enabling the downloading of systemic issues (health disparities, pollution, etc) on people unfairly.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

phew this was a bit long, sorry. With that I'm done and I think I need to go get a drink 🍺

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

The vast vast vast majority of ppl who see this warning label will never do this calculation. Hell I've done the calculation and I still feel guilty.

And it's also enabling the downloading of systemic issues (health disparities, pollution, etc) on people unfairly.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

I think we need to consider the general impact of making people feel bad for how they "caused" their cancer. This is also a real mental distress that will be experienced by 100% of people who get cancer, and in the vast majority of cases it was nothing they did (it was luck, systemic issues, etc)

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

So we are labeling beer bottles because of a 1% increase due to moderate drinking but not screening women with a 2-3% risk of developing cancer.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

*sidenote this is based on a flawed study but thats for another thread.

So let's look at the risks.
The risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer before the age of 50 is like 2-3%.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

How so?
The justification* for the recommendation that women in Canada start breast cancer screening at the age of 50 is based on the downside of screening being the worry one has to go through when there is an abnormal finding that might be cancer but isnt. false positives

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

This could lead to people discounting risks for cancer that a much higher because they get risk overload (im looking at you CA/prop65). Again out of my wheelhouse but still.

But to come back to breast cancer, we actually recognize the risk of mental worry (someone gets me!_

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

Now sure, thats just breast cancer, there are other cancers too, and a risk is a risk, so why wouldn't we want to tell people so they can be aware and reduce their risk?

Well there is a downside to it all. One, if everything is a risk, how do we know what to worry about

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

Of course the underlying risk goes up over time, so the risk from drinking does as well. The lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is something like 12%.

So the additional risk of a breast cancer diagnosis from drinking "moderately" is about 1% over your life.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

Now I'm going to do some hand wavy not perfect math but it will get the point across.
My risk of getting diagnosed by that age was a bit less than 1% so lets call it 1%.

That means my risk of getting diagnosed specifically because I enjoy a nice IPA was, generously, 0.1%.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 12h

lets get personal, I got diagnosed with breast cancer in my early 40s. According to the stats I can find my risk of getting diagnosed with breast cancer was "7–10 percent higher", it might have been up to 20% higher if I had drank more heavily than I did.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 13h

disclaimer: I understand alcohol is bad for lots of reasons and I am not qualified to say what kind of general measures that justifies taking.
But when it comes to cancer (again quick googling), I can find the stat that "up to six percent of cancer diagnoses are linked to cancer risk".

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 13h

The article makes the comparison to lung cancer risk cigarettes. This one case is quite extreme (and therefore I think more than justified). Some quick googling shows that cigarette are responsible for something like 80-90% of lung cancer deaths and maybe as high as 15% percent of smokers get cancer

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 13h

as someone who thinks a lot about data and has cancer I have mixed feelings about these kinds of warning labels about cancer risk (not just on alcohol but on most of the things that one can do to reduce cancer). 🧵https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate-alcohol-warning-9.6933765

Senate debates bill to add warning labels to alcohol packaging | CBC News

Sen. Patrick Brazeau is trying a second time to pass legislation that would add cancer warning labels to alcohol packaging.

www.cbc.ca

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 13h

We talk about the need to enforce regulations against things that are not really bike.
There may be people that mix them up but most US states have laws that differentiate between ebikes (class 1 and 2) and motorized bicycles or electric motor bikes already. eg:

letrigo.com/blogs/regula...

Massachusetts Electric Bike Laws 2025 Explained

Understand Massachusetts electric bike laws: classifications, where to ride, helmet rules, licensing, and safety tips for a compliant and enjoyable e-bike experience.

letrigo.com

Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 14h

I love this! Cookies are the Solar Panels :)

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 14h

Economies of scale is batch cooking, so the average for each dish goes down.

There is a tenuous one between partially prepared ingredients (store bought sauces, pre chopped veg) and making it faster and material cost.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 14h

In the tortured analogy department - I decided today that cooking is the best analogy for explaining learning rates:

Getting faster at cooking something over time is a learning rate.

This can be decomposed into parts:

You just figure out how to do it better (learning by doing)

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 14h

IDK if this is funny but imagining the slang I hear from my kids being used to write the significance statement of a paper submission we are working on:

This model fills a key gap in current approaches to representing X that are sus and based purely on vibes.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 18h

How have I never heard this? I love it

Jason R. Wang @jasonrwang.bsky.social · 18h

My friendly amendment to the fusion joke: Fusion hasn't been 10 years away for the last 100 years – it's always been 8.3 minutes from us! ☀️😎

Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 6d

www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFUh...
This was a fun @energyvsclimate.bsky.social to record, I hope its as fun to watch/listen. A bit different, we cover a bunch of new(ish) energy tech with our hot takes, and end on an important note that part of being an expert is admitting when you just dont know.

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Sara Hastings-Simon 🇨🇦 @shastingssimon.bsky.social · 1d

I think ebikes are the highest likelihood topic

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