you can use eSIM phone plans without needing a phone that supports eSIM
tl;dr: it’s feasible, but definitely not easy…
eSIM is actually a specification that is implemented by a UICC, or universal integrated circuit card. Phones with eSIM support have an eUICC (embedded UICC) chip, but there’s nothing preventing a vendor from making a traditional nano SIM-sized card with an eUICC that follows the eSIM spec. These are called “removable eUICCs” and are actually used in IoT devices, but their use in mobile devices is still somewhat new. A few companies have popped up that sell you removable eUICCs, like http://eSIM.me and http://esim.5ber.com, but it’s also possible to DIY your own removable eUICC.
(via Brian Scanlan)(tags: via:brian-scanlan esims mobile phones sim-cards euicc hardware devices)
Evidence Undermines ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Claims
Scientific American:
“This is just a fear-based concept that is not supported by studies,” says Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. The term ROGD is being used to “scare people or to scare legislators into voting for some of these restrictive policies that take away options for young people. It’s cruel, cruel legislation.”
(tags: rogd gender trans politics healthcare transgender)
-
“The laboratory accident hypothesis of COVID-19’s origins is a bust, but the popular consensus is unwilling to accept it.” This is an excellent long-form article about the lab-leak hypothesis of COVID-19’s origin, how it’s now leaked into the US elites’ mindset, and how it demonstrates our current problem with conspiracy theories:
I learned almost nothing of value when I was a [JFK] conspiracy theorist, but I did learn quite a lot pulling myself out of that mindset, and like [Scott] Alexander, I would never have done so had I only ever encountered people who told me I was being an imbecile. Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is that they allow a person to feel more intelligent than the drones who passively drift along on the current of received consensus. […] For now and the foreseeable future, much of the COVID-origins discourse remains committed to an illusory explanation that appeals to misfiring intuitions and trades almost entirely in suspicion and innuendo. Highly intelligent minds are as vulnerable to irrational thinking and conspiracist ideation as those of the cognitively impaired, particularly if they are used to perceiving problems in political terms. Reasoning well, Scott Alexander reminds us, is hard and “all factual claims can become the basis for emotional/social coalitions.” The best way to avoid this trap is to try to remember that we do not live through the looking glass where up is down and black is white. In quotidian reality, things are usually exactly as they appear to be.
(tags: reasoning logic media lab-leak covid-19 conspiracies politics us-politics china long-reads)