581–590 of 676 posts
So the US won the cold war and eventually decided to emulate their defeated opponent. It's quite a character arch.
You know propaganda has worked flawlessly when you see the US doing US things and the comments are “just like Russia / North Korea / China!”
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My father was a Ph.D., a research scientist at a large state university. After understanding how political everything is under the surface, he cautioned me from ever working in a field that depended on government funding. "What one administration gives you, the next one can take away" is close to a literal quote. Outsiders like to imagine that the pure pursuit of science without any agendas is what university researc…
"Political" in the context of research funding generally doesn't mean what it means under this administration. Administrations have always shifted priorities as far as what scientific fields they want to fund , and individual PMs have also made more opinionated choices. This is normal and expected. A DARPA PM is limited to a 7-year term to ensure that fresh blood constantly enters the system. What's happening now is…
It's not true, because The people who want power will just make a typo—or do a stupid keyword match—and now Harry Buttle is gone. They have no incentive to be consistent or accurate.
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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…
No biologist is an essentialist for long. Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you ou define sex by the specific definition of gametes. The author is not wrong within that limited scope. But, what really matters is the phenotype of sex, which is not binary, is highly overlapping, and is a complex developmental phenomenon. When people get all up in arms being anti trans,…
Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."
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Captain Obvious here, but the number of defenestrations (or generally mysterious "suicides" of people not agreeing enough with the government) is much higher in Russia than in the US. In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense. Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a…
They have a head start on you, but you're catching up quickly! Worth remembering they have been shooting peaceful protestors recently in the US too. Trump and Hegseth are explicit in their admiration for Putin and Xi. So being technically right here is largely to miss the point. The trajectory the US is on is pretty clear.
Just pointing out that Putin has systematically turned Russia into a full-blown fascist autocracy, but even in Russia this took nearly two decades until all opposition was crushed.
MAGA has the same goal (turning the US into a fascist autocracy), but I bet it will be much harder and would take much longer to dismantle the checks-and-balances system in the US as completely as Putin did in Russia.
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They voted for this. In larger numbers than in 2020 and 2016.
What is this "this" you're referring to? Was this on the ballot? Did Trump announce that he would do this? It seems very easy to just blame this on the voter like this.
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> which are really just two “blessed” combinations of the above characteristics. Nope. Not what I said at all. Nothing I said in any way related to the idea that some combinations were “blessed”. Merely that there are two pathways. Individuals may travel those two pathways in numerous ways, but until someone discovers a third gamete, there are only two pathways. > The thing about reality is that it persists no matter…
You sir, are no biologist.
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Private companies don’t do basic research.
Have things changed since Bell Labs produced the transistor?
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> Peer review is a closed system of expertise that doesn’t let you challenge the core tenants Strong claims require strong evidence. The tenants some people want to challenge are climate change, gender identity, renewable energy, vaccinations, etc. So its a hard bargain, I believe science benefits from being a bit stubborn.
Alzheimer’s research would probably be the easiest one to point to. And I’d argue all fields could use more dissenting opinions and new options. I don’t know if this would be the path to that but keep in mind there have been many things historically where someone needed to take a leap of faith to go against the current dogma.
Consensus is a thing, but science is not one institution, is a bunch of different warring factions of people trying to get published and cited and funding.
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I'm Canadian and I can tell you this was always part of Project 2025, which was extremely obviously the plan all along. So I don't know. Assuming the American voter can read and and access to the internet, it's kind of pathetic to imply they couldn't have known
people in america have low political involvement after years of politicians ignoring their material needs. non-voters are the biggest group of voters. i think it’s by design.
America is not exceptional.