541–550 of 676 posts
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It does not. Source: did that until last year when we had to move for the new job of my wife. Rented a 60 m² apartment.
So you conveniently omitted that your wife was also contributing? Is being "solid middle class" in Germany assumes to ever be able to buy your own apartment (preferably not a a 60m^2 shoe-box)?
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Wow, it's not often that you get to see someone unironically defend cronyism and nepotism as a goal to be reached rather than a cancer to be eradicated. I guess it really does take all strokes.
rayiner has previously written that he thinks all non-property owners in the US to be disenfranchised. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46885305 > Instead, the electorate should be narrowed to property owning people who have an IQ above 85 (within one SD of median) and two grandparents born in the U.S. (so culturally assimilated). Really, nothing he writes is surprising.
Sure, if you think Americans are sheep to be herded—what Woodrow Wilson called the “unphilosophical bulk of humanity”—by credentialed experts who make the important decisions, you have no problem with the dumbest, least responsible people voting. Because in your model voting is just a signal of approval/disapproval, not genuine self governance. You can’t afford to do that if you think the effect of people’s votes should be direct and not filtered through an expert class that second guesses them.
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The sex requirements for procreation are orthogonal to the spectrum of sex variation observed. https://archive.is/2025.02.21-160254/https://www.scientifica...
You didn’t read the article. There are two developmental pathways for sexual reproduction: - one produces small mobile gametes - one produces large immobile gametes There can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism in different species ends up on one pathway or the other, there can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism on either pathway develops, and there can be plenty of variation in how…
The thing about reality is that it persists no matter how stridently one denies it.
Here's a more concise summary of the proposed changes: https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change... I don't think any practicing scientist of any political persuasion will think these are good for science. Science progresses by sharing knowledge openly and publicly, so others can evaluate it, criticize it, and build on it. These severe restrictions on collaboration, publication, and public communic…
Why does science need to be through the government? Irrespective of the proposal, science research is just as open after this change as before so long as it's funded by private citizens who can control the channels through which they donate to this work. On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a con…
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$$$$$ > €€€ or ££ With a few exceptions like Switzerland, American levels of compensation for highly qualified people just can't be matched anywhere in the Western world. Saudi Arabia or UAE maybe, but these don't even try to pretend to be socially and politically liberal.
> With a few exceptions like Switzerland, American levels of compensation for highly qualified people just can't be matched anywhere in the Western world. Gross compensation yes. But if you begin deducting stuff like the absurd American housing costs, private healthcare, saving up for deductibles, the need to own, insure, fuel and maintain a car to do everything because almost nothing is accessible by public transpor…
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Not exactly the start of major corruption. The Trump 2.0 administration was already easily the most corrupt in American history well before these rules were proposed. To their credit(?) they don't even try to hide it, they are just fully corrupt out in the open, because they know the cultists who support them will support anything they do.
It’s always the poor and uneducated voters that get the blame. It’s never the actual billionaires who got Trump elected and who control everything he does and much of the media zeitgeist because, you know, 100s of billions can really flood the zone. I don’t think you’re evil for being fooled, but try to think a bit deeper about where power and blame lie. It’s not uneducated rural folk the median yuppie finds uncool.
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> As if seeking out the best of the best to collaborate with, independent of their checkboxes, was somehow undesirable The best of the best involves people from underrepresented groups. These policies exist to counteract the cronyism and “doesn’t look like me”-ism inherent to the way people make choices. We know people don’t hire and collaborate with the best of the best, because when looking for the best they see it…
Sounds like your brain was cooked by sound bites over reason and statistics! Culture war indeed! In fact, we see this now in Silicon Valley where 80% of workers are foreign born. Not a representative group of Americans by any stretch, and we see a lot of negativity towards folks Silicon Valley will never interact with as a result. And who are the wealthy bigots? Not the richest people in the history of the world. No,…
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The administrative state wasn’t merely created by the same progressives that gave us eugenics. It has its roots in the same dim view of the common man and how much agency they should be given. Woodrow Wilson and other progressives were deeply skeptical of democracy. He wrote about the how the “unphilosophical bulk of mankind” didn’t know what was good for them. And his solution to that was to have the government run…
> went to the Supreme Court…racially segregated voting districts How is enforcing the two greatest anti Jim Crow laws (VRA and CRA), somehow, equivalent to returning to Jim Crow itself? > the administrative state I’m trying to understand better, but it just seems like you are very opposed to merit based hiring in government and I don’t understand why. I understand your appeal to history, but what could be a better ap…
In both cases, republicans were the ones that wanted to enforce the civil rights laws. Democrats were the ones who wanted to violate the civil rights laws by treating people differently based on race. In SFFA they wanted universities to be able to discriminate against applicants based on race, and in Louisiana v. Callais, they wanted to draw racially segregated voting districts.
> the administrative state I’m trying to understand better, but it just seems like you are very opposed to merit based hiring in government and I don’t understand why.
Because the criteria we use for “merit” are degrees from elite universities, membership in professional organizations, etc. So while I think merit-based hiring for government is desirable in theory, what I think happens in practice is the emergence of a definable class of credentialed professionals, entry into which gatekept by non-government institutions like Harvard, etc. That turns over tremendous amounts of power to people and institutions that aren’t democratically accountable. And I don’t buy the premise that these credentialed professionals are any less political than anyone else. They, and the institutions they are affiliated with, have cohesive interests and pursue those interests in government.
I think it’s better to do what Trump did in 2024: get on stage with the people he intends to appoint to top jobs, and have them talk about what they want to do. Let voters see the team they’re voting for. Look, I also think RFK is a nutjob. But the response to that should be for the Democratic candidate in 2028 to get on stage with who they intend to appoint to HHS. Let them talk about their credentials and expertise and what they intend to do. Let them explain why RFK is a disaster and has made voters worse off. I think that’s a fantastic way for a democracy to operate.
A return of Lysenkoism. Nice!
If these rules go into effect, is it not true that individuals, state governments, and non-governmental organizations could still fund scientific research that the federal government won't fund?
Of course there's still research that only the federal government could fund. A big example is e.g. DARPA and the Internet. Imagine if that was only funded and supported by a few states.
Here's a more concise summary of the proposed changes: https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-change... I don't think any practicing scientist of any political persuasion will think these are good for science. Science progresses by sharing knowledge openly and publicly, so others can evaluate it, criticize it, and build on it. These severe restrictions on collaboration, publication, and public communic…
Why does science need to be through the government? Irrespective of the proposal, science research is just as open after this change as before so long as it's funded by private citizens who can control the channels through which they donate to this work. On the other hand, if we can't get private citizens to donate to science research, then they are not likely to vote for it either--polls don't register much of a con…
This comment reflects a level of ignorance that would make Dunning & Kruger facepalm.
The idea that you compare a democratically elected government’s taxes… to that of an unelected tyrant show a complete lack of perspective.