dukeleto
1yr ago
As I understand it the main legal issue is that congress didn’t appropriate the money to forgive the loans. Student loans where supposed to be a source of revenue (for example this is partially how Obama care was supposed to be financed https://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-giant-student-loan-con-1480640259 note that this is from 2016) so it seems to be a bit of a stretch that a different older law (the hero’s act) would allow the excecutive to simply take all of this money and spend it on something else.
dukeleto
5mo ago
The part where we station 2 aircraft carriers to prevent Iran or another Arab power from responding to Israel or the part where we are now going to give Israel another 15 billion
I definitely don’t approve of them becoming a state, the UK isn’t culturally compatible. I mean they don’t even have a first amendment like protections to say nothing of the royal family. I’d sooner annex Mexico.
dukeleto
7mo ago
I wonder if fentanyl is ultimately bad for the cartels? Its primary advantage over traditional opioids is the extremely small dosages that users require. They’re so small I assume you could simply impregnate a letter with the stuff, mail it and almost certainly get away with it. This has to undermine the cartels business model which is predicted on smuggling relatively large quantities of drugs across international borders.
dukeleto
11mo ago
I’m pretty sure no one actually gets permits to work on their homes. My dad sold his house a few years ago with a completely unpermitted fire place, the only consequence was the inspector reporting this to the buyer. No one cared and they still closed the deal.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I agree, I think a lot of people are pretty desperate to reframe this to somehow make Paul look bad because they don’t like him. He is clearly the victim here and Musk and everyone else who was pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories about this attack should simply move on to other topics.
dukeleto
4mo ago
Does cal tech still do this? I had heard that they had jumped on the social justice wagon and weren’t even excepting standardized testing scores for a while.
dukeleto
1yr ago
Or the numerous times this guy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Fagan_(intruder) broke into buckingham palace. Most people don’t maximize physical security because our social contract doesn’t require it.
dukeleto
5mo ago
Fundamentally I think issues l should be viewed in the following light:
- Israel and Israel’s supporters (primarily American Jews and evangelicals), want the us to give Israel 15 billion dollars.
- This will enable Israel to expand their activities in the Gaza Strip and possibly invade Lebanon again and could easily end up involving the us in the region again.
I and many other Americans who don’t have any affiliation with Israel are asking if this is in our national interest. Many more democrats than republicans do not think it is and Democratic support is required to make this pass. Rather than debating this issue on its merits the adl and other Israel supporters are doing their best to make it a conversation about anti semitism. In my opinion suggesting that universities are antisemitic places is even more preposterous than suggesting that they are racist places and anyone who cares a wit about freedom of speech should should be concerned that the wealthy donors have this much influence over public institutions (by which I mean u penn.). I can’t believe that I am actually in support of something Harvard is doing (this is probably the first time ever), but it sort of refreshing that their endowment is so big that they can ignore these kinds of donor demands.
Once you step back and remember that unlike America, France IS an active colonial power ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Françafrique ) having big riots every 10 to 15 years actually seems like an endorsement of having a legal system which is blind to race.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I basically agree with this sentiment and would try and reframe the discussion in terms of luxury beliefs: namely people living thousands of miles from land borders can easily harbor fantasies about human nature while ignoring (and experiencing) few of the very real negative externalities associated uncontrolled illegal immigration. If a relatively small number of buses (or even flights) are required to make the most politically powerful parts of this country more fully aware of the kinds of the problems they are rather thoughtlessly creating for others.
Fundamentally I suspect that everyone would be much better off if there were fewer, better compensated graduate students. The situation which presently exists is that there are many graduate students that have either mediocre talent or are independently wealthy (or both) that use graduate school as an opportunity to slack off and enjoy their 20’s. This group is an enormous beneficiary of the stipend and probably mostly only puts in 20 hours a week.
This is in contrast to a second smaller group which conducts substantial amounts of valuable scientific work, usually putting in 40-60 hours a week while receiving shit compensation and negligible benefits. This group mostly consists of international students whom can’t get other jobs and domestic students whom are either brilliant/delusional enough to believe that they will get an academic job.
I was in this category making 25000 a year (in Colorado which is much lower coa than California) working weekends so I left for a job in the private sector where I make considerably more money and don’t work weekends. I would have stayed if a hard core graduate school option that paid me 40-50 k a year to work weekends had existed (which is vastly less than what I make outside of graduate school) and insulated me from having to deal the obnoxious activist type whom mostly come out of the first category.
Graduate schools should serve this second group of students and treat them like salaried employees hired to do research. Teaching/grading jobs should be simple hourly jobs open to any student and tuition wavers need to disappear (since no one besides extremely rich masters students actually pay tuition, stated tuition is ridiculously high).
dukeleto
3mo ago
Metformin, is widely recognized as the only pharmaceutical drug currently in use with (modest), anti-aging effects. It’s my understanding that this is hypothesized to be primarily a result of its ability to reduce blood glucose.
Does anyone know if there’s any research into whether newer antidiabetic pharmaceuticals (like ozempic or trizepeptide) may also have this affect in non obese people?
dukeleto
4mo ago
I assume it has a lot to do with the private universities, I mean Berkeley is basically a public ivy and they have 45k students.
I think it’s important because airlines are so heavily regulated that the rules which govern passenger compensation in the event of a cancellation are written by the bureaucracy. A few days ago southwest was trying to blame all of the cancellations on the weather which under the current rules would have allowed them to avoid paying for the hotels/rental cars etc. that they may be liable for.
While they can’t retroactively enforce these rules on southwest they can credibly threaten to impose more passenger friendly rules in an attempt to get southwest to behave better now.
dukeleto
5mo ago
I think you’re completely missing my point which is that it’s questionable that giving Israel a lot of money to destabilize the Middle East is a good idea (not the least of which is because you are mostly propping up Netanyahu). The us needs to be preparing to compete with China, not wasting our energies on regional fights in the Middle East and
As for Israel’s alleged strategic importance, every example you have was of Jews working in america. Israel itself is not particularly productive or important.
I’d also encourage you to look at the domestic Israeli political situation, before advocating American political involvement.
I have been having back and leg pain for the last few months. It comes and goes (although seems to be triggered by running, which is a shame because I love to run) and can be extremely painful at times (on the order of not being able to walk). It’s always on the same side and the pain is severe enough that I think I must have a pinched nerve or something (I’m sure I haven’t sprained or torn a muscle).
I want to see someone about this and I’m not sure what sort of doctor I should start with. Is there any reason to goto a chiropractor, or should I just start with an orthopedic surgeon? I’m hoping this is an issue that is solveable with physical therapy.
dukeleto
2mo ago
Testosterone replacement therapy helped me a lot, but mine was actually pretty low for my age group. It likely won’t do anything if yours is in range (and commits you to giving yourself weekly injections the rest of your life), so isn’t something to just jump right into
dukeleto
1yr ago
I’m of the opinion that the overwhelming majority of tech startups are overvalued and only existed as a result of absurdly low interest rates that no longer exist. Many of them would have failed eventually as a result of their inability to raise money and if this pushes some of them out sooner that’s a good thing.
More fundamentally I hope that this pushes some of the intellectual capital currently wasted on basically pointless ventures into more productive parts of the economy.
China did this explicitly a couple of years ago by straight up banning tech startups and I believe it was good policy (https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-tech-giants-policy). I’m glad that interest normalization is having the same effect.
dukeleto
1yr ago
Would be interesting if this still holds for Caucasian students. I’m guessing it wouldn’t.
dukeleto
8mo ago
Spotted the electrical engineer. I do the same thing every time I see blm (I think bureau of land management first).
dukeleto
7mo ago
They are now, but this nonsense about either deporting all of the Palestinians or maintaining a status quo in which the palestians are not Israeli citizens is basically a form of apartheid
dukeleto
1yr ago
Just move out of California, there are plenty of other places in the us where the law is enforced and you don’t have to deal with all of the stupid low trust bullshit. I’m saying this as someone who left the Bay Area around a year before the pandemic and has since lived in various places in Colorado and now Summerlin Las Vegas.
One could argue that this has extended to other domains, with exhibit 1 being Kamala Harris. Like she must be pretending to be dumb right? I need to find a video of her in court at some point, there is no way the California attorney general was this incompetent.
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