NewCharlesInCharge
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User ID: 89
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Is that an honest question or are trying to twist someone's words?
In either case, the status of the vaccine around the timing of the election is known. Eric Topol has been very vocal about his part in delaying the vaccine until after the election. We've since learned that Pfizer, who Topol said he successfully targeted, decided to simply stop processing lab samples in order to delay approval until after the election:
Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday [ed: the day after the election]. When the samples were tested, there were 94 cases of Covid in the trial. The DSMB met on Sunday.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Certainly the findings of the personal research can be shared. Were they?
If not that's a decent signal that the "personal research" was more "personally hopping on the bandwagon without having conducted any research."
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
One signal that wokeness is waning: the words printed at the bottom of the helmets of NFL players.
I don't have metrics on this, this is all just my subjective perception. I scrubbed through my recording of the games while writing this in the interest of accuracy.
At the start of the 2020 season, just a few months after social justice become trendy, the NFL decided to allow players to swap out the name of their team on the back of the helmet for a social justice message. At that time they could choose one of four messages: "Stop Hate," "It Takes All Of Us," "End Racism," or "Black Lives Matter." The league would also sometimes print these messages on the field.
At the season opener this past Thursday, with the L.A. Rams facing the Buffalo Bills, I noticed a new message: "Choose Love." I thought it was just nearly all of the Rams sporting this one, but this article says it was all of them. Few of the Bills were displaying anything except for their team name. That the preferred message was so non-specific was a signal itself that attitudes may be shifting. The article says that the NFL says "Choose Love" is a message against hate crimes and gun violence, but I would never have guessed that had it not been spelled out for me.
This past Sunday I watched three games: Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers vs. Minnesota Vikings, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Dallas Cowboys.
For Bengals vs Steelers I saw zero of these messages. Notably neither quarterback on either team had such a message.
In Packers vs Vikings I couldn't see any messages on the Packers, I'd say about a third of the Vikings had them. Neither quarterback had them.
For Cowboys vs. Bucs I saw none on the Cowboys, about half of Bucs players had them, which included the quarterback Tom Brady, sporting "Inspire Change."
In all of the games I noticed just one "Black Lives Matter," on a Vikings player.
Maybe I'm just misremembering the prevalence of these the past two seasons, but I thought they used to be more likely than not, especially for star players.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
The role the FDA played in the delay isn't quite clear. Pfizer revised their protocol after discussion with the FDA, but there's no evidence that this was politically motivated. Protocols get revised sometimes.
Their decision to halt testing samples seems to have no other explanation except to delay any announcement of progress until after the election.
Had they not decided to halt testing of samples, they would have met their revised 62 case threshold prior to the election. Had they not submitted for approval at that point it would have been more obvious that they were dragging their feet.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
The Biden administration did end the investigation of the self-proclaimed institutional racism at Yale that was initiated by Bob Barr.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
James Damore made a similar argument about why women aren't well-represented in technical roles. He was making the point in part because he agreed that women ought to be better represented and that to get there would require different strategies if interest was the problem and not bias. He was hung out to dry.
You can't even be on their side and have ideologically incorrect data.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
In the American case we should probably re-negotiate treaties that are still in force with the tribes. It's been over a hundred years and there's probably some efficient moves to make to improve the well-being of both parties. It'd also be nice to get a definition of tribal sovereignty down on paper instead of leave it up to the courts to figure out.
I'm guessing we don't because relations with Native Americans are an afterthought in the grand scheme of American politics, and tribal leadership don't want to jeopardize their position. If treaty ratification comes down to a popular vote, tribal members might opt to sell their reservations back to the federal government.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Also there's both overt Western involvement that mainstream media portrays as good and proper, along with covert Western involvement, without which the conflict probably wouldn't have happened, that won't be talked about in mainstream sources for decades, if at all.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
If you zoom out very far, back to the 80's and 90's, you'll see an unprecedented camel's hump of growth and decline starting in March of 2020, peaking a year ago, and now the index is roughly where you'd expect if growth had continued at about the same pace as it had since roughly 2009.
It was fake gains, with asset prices being inflated by easy money that had to be parked somewhere. The easy money pressure is waning.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Whatever kind of abstraction you’ve opted for, it’s greatly underperformed the market as a whole.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
I wonder what would have happened if the racists in the story were part of an out-group rather than an in-group.
If you've spent any time around academia, even as an undergrad, you'd know that these institutions and the people that they are composed of are absolutely desperate for diversity. In their hierarchy Mohamed is better than Christopher, but Fatima would be even better. It doesn't pass the sniff test that not only would these institutions harbor an anti-Arab bias, but some would write down racist statements and send them to the applicant.
Imagine instead that the applicant was seeking a job in the oil industry, or with a defense contractor. Would the thread still be up?
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
When evaluating this I recommend comparing to some approximation of the whole market rather than up / down. "Up over 3 years" is a very low bar. The S&P 500 is up 30% over that time period.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
It seems that people at least really liked the aesthetics of Hong Kong. Mainland China seems to be a harder sell unless it's pre-revolutionary (as in pre-ROC) China where the aesthetics are concerned.
Period dramas are a big chunk of what's on television. There's even a full-scale replica of the Forbidden City to shoot them in.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Meta: I hope we can maintain norms that downvotes aren't for mere disagreement. This thread has some heavily downvoted comments that as far as I can tell aren't arguing in bad faith, breaking rules, or violating other norms. This is one such comment, there are many others.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
I've always found it hilarious that the actual Marxist countries don't buy into these feel-good education theories. China's education system is highly regimented and college entrance is gated by a test that you get one chance to take. They study Marx and Engels as a body of knowledge to be passed from teacher to student, not as some organic discovery that takes place when the student picks up a copy of Das Kapital.
AFAIK the USSR was the same way.
Do the Cubans or the North Koreans educate their children this way?
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Did they teach the phonetic symbols but not the letter combinations that would most commonly produce them?
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
In America we have caught ecoterrorists planning and executing pipeline sabotage many times.
In Googling to confirm my memory, I found that a movie called "How To Blow Up a Pipeline" premiered at a film festival in Toronto two weeks ago, and has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 14 reviews. It's based on a 2021 book which lauds this kind of property destruction.
This is nothing new. Even if it is government actors, they can easily blame ecoterrorists because this is what ecoterrorists do.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
My high school was in a military town. While we did have folks that might fit the definition of a jock, there was no dominant jock clique, and jocks were distributed pretty diffusely throughout many friend clusters. There was also a great deal of kids that had just arrived last year and would be leaving the next, and didn't have the time to develop strong cliqueish ties.
I witnessed one instance of physical bullying during all of high school, and as far as I know it didn't recur. The bully didn't get any positive or negative reinforcement, those of us around just kind of stared because this was strange and like something from a TV show.
I also can't recall any instances of serious nerd teasing, and being fairly nerdy, I think I would've been a target. My friends and I would tease each other about all kinds of things, but there wasn't anyone enforcing non-nerdy norms.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
This is nothing new. Even if it is government actors, they can easily blame ecoterrorists because this is what ecoterrorists do.
Thermite will burn underwater, through what I assume is steel, and is easily manufactured. You wouldn't even necessarily need a diver, you could ignite and toss a whole bunch of thermite pots over the target area and hope for a strike.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
America has no such thing, at least not anymore.
The Royals are the embodiment of British identity. At home people can project on to them the essential British values they hold dear, and with other heads of state they can be the people's avatar.
The American President used to fulfill this role, but with fracturing American identity, the President is no longer is the embodiment of American identity. He can't be, what essential American values are left that he can stand for?
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.
Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal. We can certainly blame Hitler for invading the Sudetenland, but we can also blame the Allies for creating the conditions that would lead the Germans to rally behind a strongman.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
Fermite on its own, no. I don't know how much energy would be suddenly released by burning a hole in a pressurized pipeline, though.
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
You think that Russia would've invaded Ukraine in Feb 2022 if Yanukovych had never been deposed?
Why would they bother?
Without the coup, there would have been no rebel oblasts. With those oblasts continuing to participate in elections there probably would have been no government elected that would seriously entertain the idea that Ukraine join an anti-Russian military alliance.
On Russia and Europe: Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin have all floated the idea of Russia joining NATO. No one in NATO has ever appeared to like that idea, with American Presidents and Secretaries of State dismissing it. It was the Americans that pledged there would be no NATO expansion into former Soviet states after the fall of the Soviet Union, "not one inch eastward." That was obviously a pledge broken, and not even in response to any Russian hostilities.
I'm American and I can't make any sense of our foreign policy strategy in regards to Russia. It all seems like dick-waving with potential nuclear consequences. What do we even get if we "win?"
NewCharlesInCharge
1yr ago
The trial of Darrell Brooks is set to start this coming Monday, October 3. Brooks is accused of running over 77 people at the Waukesha Christmas Parade.
Brooks will be representing himself. His motion to do so was granted today. There have been a few entertaining / exasperating videos of Brooks and the Judge going back and forth on this matter.
Brooks believes himself to be a sovereign citizen. In one of the videos he's crossed out the words "I understand" and replaced them with "I have been informed of." These were on a form he had to sign that warned him of the perils of self-representation. It turns out this is a sovereign citizen thing. They believe that to say "I understand" means that they "stand under" the court and are subject to its authority. In the video granting his motion the judge finds that "I have been informed of" is functionally equivalent to "I understand" and Brooks objects, saying he never said those words.
Culture war angle: this was a big culture war story last year as people perceived the attack as both under-covered and when it was covered, downplayed. The Rittenhouse case got many orders of magnitude more coverage and had an order of magnitude fewer victims.
Additionally, on the videos I discovered that YouTube tacks on a link to the sovereign citizen movement page on Wikipedia, giving it the same treatment as COVID-19 misinformation.
I consume a lot of media generated by former SEALs, and have heard commentary both directly about this case and about training in selection in general.
The impression I get is that allowing PEDs would be akin to lowering the standard, and that's not okay. Lowering the standard means the guy next to you in combat is less likely to be able to pull his own weight and therefore more likely to get himself and others killed. Further, while the training is very physically demanding, the physical burden is a means to weed out individuals that are not able or willing to push themselves through the pain. PEDs would supposedly make for a lighter physical burden, which means a candidate could get through without needing to exert the same level of mental toughness.
From what I hear, the standards have changed very little. This stat is likely an artifact of far more people being given the chance to try. The Navy has expanded the SEAL pipeline by recruiting sailors directly into the occupation, rather than requiring recruits to select a non-spec-ops career first and then apply for SEAL training. They've also added training for the training, with a course that will prep you for BUD/S itself.
To add to this, his mom tells a story that the instructors rang the bell on his behalf, and that his tibia was broken in two places.
From what I hear, this is bullshit. Quitting is voluntary. Instructors will badger and heckle you to quit, but they can't quit on your behalf. Even if they did ring the bell, in order to quit you have to sign paperwork asserting that you are quitting before you can be processed out.
If you end up with an injury that prevents you from completing the training you can try again after you heal.
I'm also wondering exactly what the X-ray showed. His mom says his tibia was broken in two places, but from everything I can find you would not be able to walk, much less run, with such an injury. You can't just grit your teeth and push through the pain, your leg will collapse. If the leg bending in the wrong spots isn't noticeable, the massive swelling from blood and bone marrow spilling out of the fractures would be.
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