CharonY

So, looking at polls among democratic and likely democratic voters the choice was highly popular. I think there is one thing that one needs to understand for the US voting system (and actually to some degree also the Canadian, though a bit less so) is that due to the partisan divide, you do not win elections by getting folks from the other aisle or trying to get the biggest consensus. You win elections by mobilizing folks on your side (if we put the issue of gerrymandering aside for the moment) not by trying to get others to move to your side. I.e. the goal is to combat apathy. The GOP is doing that by creating a visceral response based on fear. Themes like white displacement, LGBTQ agendas, immigrants and economic fears (often tied to the former) are wedge issues that create emotional responses and trigger all the right identity politics boxes that helps getting a higher turnout. Especially in the polarized atmosphere we are right now, trying to stay in the middle and appease those that won't vote for you either way is a ticket out of power.

In that case it seems he is simply just communicating to someone else than you think he should. Basically he is telling progressive as well as black voters that he is fulfilling his campaign promise to them. As all politicians it is an overture to gain their continued support. In the polarized atmosphere I doubt that folks that have an issue with perception would have voted for him in the first place.

It seems a bit like a style over substance argument. Having 100 white men is fine as long as one makes the appearance of not discriminating. Rectifying the situation in a targeted way is bad even if the outcome is fine. Or it could be an argument of equality vs equity. It is fine to give everyone 100$ (equality) but only given poor folks 100$ in order to lessen the difference (equity) is bad, because it discriminates. What is missed in this argument is that the system under which everything operates (i.e. context) results in differential outcomes even with equal input. With regard to the privilege argument, it is not about that life is not hard for e.g. white folks (or whichever group or class are considered privileged). It means that for the exact same person in the exact same situation, swapping out a factor such as skin colour would result in a bit different outcome. You might get a couple of more rejections, if you are black, for example. Or in certain areas you might have a harder time getting an apartment. You might not get into certain school districts. In my case, the schools tried very hard to discourage my parents to put me on a track that would allow me to get university, despite being first in class (Germany has weird tracks which only allow certain pupils to attend university and luckily when I was a school kid recommendations were not binding). As my parents (also immigrants) told me, as an immigrant you have to be perfect to be perceived as adequate. However, a big issue is that come second or third generation, certain folks are more accepted into a given population than others, often because they are less visually distinct (I do feel that this specifically is a bigger issue in Europe than in North America). The culmination of all these factors that could result in a somewhat different and typically worse track is what the term "privilege" tries to convey. No one is asking for shame, but folks are starting to ask to take a look at the system. One crude, but in the long run potentially effective system is to have more diversity in places of power. It is certainly not perfect and will not work everywhere. However, for example in medical sciences, having women on higher boards has helped to highlight the lack of in issues that are not found in men. In the past having male cohorts were considered easier and often standard. Likewise having cohorts with disproportionately non-white individuals could get thrown out by reviewers as non-representative. Now, a higher diversity in the boards has made researchers to think harder in justifying a given cohort. The situation has not really caught up, but at the very least we start to see movement into the right direction. But we still have massive knowledge gaps in even some basic aspects of female biology (especially, but not exclusively when it comes to the endocrine system).

A few years back there was a study by Stoet and Geary (2018). The gender-equality paradox in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. Psychological Science, 29, 581–593. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617741719 In that report the authors claimed that the in more equal societies women are less likely to choose STEM careers. While there are issues with the overall interpretation of cause and effect, as well as potential of simplification (i.e. narrative vs data) it certainly created quite a buzz. I did not really followed up on it, but came across a few interesting tidbits. Apparently other researchers took a closer look at the numbers and found them to be off. The original authors apparently did some calculations which they did not explain. They issued later a rather lengthy erratum (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797619892892). Other researchers have responded and shown that the identified correlation is not really stable and is highly dependent on measures one uses and which countries are picked. I.e. the data quality is insufficient for the conclusion. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0956797619872762 This outcome reinforces the issue of how simple narratives are often insufficient to address complex outcomes. Unfortunately public discourse is not well suited to these types of complex (and highly academic) analyses.

Except once the culture of "fit" for a position has been set, folks that are similar to the prevailing composition will continue to be preferred/deemed more competent. This won't go away by simply saying that starting now we will stop discriminating.

Yes opportunities and for Italians an Irish for example have changed, maybe as late as the 20th century. About time we do it for other minorities, no?

I actually I was hoping that we were over the 60s mindset...

So which one would then be a reasonable comparison? Reagan made a campaign promise to appoint the first woman, which he did. He also chose Scalia since he wanted da an Italian-American on the court, thought that was less publicized at that time. Lyndon B Johnson basically groomed Marshall to become the first black supreme court justice (though publicly announcing it at that time as such would have been politically damaging, of course),

So the argument then seems to be that white male judges do not bring the personal experience and potential diversity in experiences to the table that a black female judge would bring.

If a white judge was selected, one could make the inverse argument that the system excludes minority judges. After all a random selection among the majority favours the majority, as evidenced by the non-representative selection of judges over the history of the US. So following that system we would be likely in for either a white male judge, and with a lower likelihood a female white judge.

It is also somewhat interesting that the issue of meritocracy rarely (if at all) gets raised when white men are under consideration.

I think decomposition might not be the correct term, or at least it might be confusing in this context. You might be referring to tissue damage as oppose to decomposition, which refers to breakdown into simpler compounds, typically via microbial activities (and generally also refers to large-scale events, as even in living organisms microbes do kind of decompose stuff, but very localized). With regard to death typically lack of oxygen (rather than lack of nutrients) initiates cell death (often by apoptoptic but also in part via necrotic mechanisms) within minutes. But I do not think that one would talk about decomposition at this point. Edit: crossposted.

Clearly Russia has no other choice but to attack before it happens. If not, it may increase their ability to fend off a Russian invasion.

All you have been doing is using a broad brush. Even ignoring the atrocious and evocative characterization of certain folks, the superficial look at incarceration statistics is an example of using a too broad brush. Generally speaking crime is a relatively rare event which is not randomly distributed in a population. Some of the key factors, especially for violent crimes, where incarceration is more likely, include socioeconomic status and gender. So for these types of comparisons, at least representative cohorts are needed. Other ways to look at it would be to se whether areas or times with high immigration correlate with change in crime trajectories relative to areas which have no or reduced immigration and so on. Most in-depth studies were conducted in the US have clearly shown that the association between immigration and crime is a myth. Longitudinal analyses conclude that first generation immigrants are less likely to enter a crime trajectory, while 2nd generation kind of catch up to their native peers (https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2012.659200), undocumented immigrants were less likely to be involved in crime than their legal or native peers (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2014704117), a consistent negative association has been found between crime and immigration (https://doi.org/10.1080/15377938.2016.1261057), a pattern also seen in Canada (https://doi.org/10.3138/cjccj.2019-0015; https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.0.0229) and the UK https://doi.org/10.1163/15718174-02503002. In other words, once one puts the big brush aside, a finer resolved view emerges that counters the persistent but false narrative of immigrant crimes. What it does tell us that among immigrants the factors that are associated with crime (e.g. low income, gender bias) are likely overrepresented plus potential bias in policing. Also your selection of countries for criminal immigrants is quite interesting considering that the top foreign nationalities are Albanian, Polish, Romanian and Irish. Not saying that mentioning those would be any better, but perhaps there is some discrepancy between perception and reality?

No, your adaptive immune response changes throughout your whole live. It is kind of the point of it, too.

First of all, that is not how soap works. Others have already mentioned the correct role of soap. Biogas production from sewage is done in specialized systems which encourages the growth of methanogens. They do not harvest skin bacteria to do that. As already mentioned, soap is more of an abrasive and, as a detergent, has general physical properties (i.e. disruption of lipids) as opposed to antibiotics which target highly specific molecules (e.g. a specific ribosomal subunit or enzyme). As the mechanisms are so different and unspecific, it it is rather difficult to develop resistance against it. It is a bit like trying to become resistant against a sledgehammer to the head.

That is neat and describes what happens during sensory deprivation, to some degree.

That is also a classic example, but in some ways it was also a very classic approach. Fleming sorted through petri-dishes and found that plates with mould there were clear zones. From there he formed the hypothesis that something was there inhibiting bacterial growth. On the one hand the plates probably not prepared with the express intention to identify inhibiting compounds, yet the first observation led more or less straight to the correct hypothesis. It goes to what I was thinking earlier, whether discoveries are truly serendipitous or whether it is more or less just the way it works.

And then you should look at the punishments meted out by crimes more commonly conducted by poor vs those by the rich. Consider how much impact, say, the punishment for a parking ticket has for a poor person vs a rich. Also consider who is more likely to influence laws and punishment levels. One concrete example to think about: the opioid crisis was driven largely by the Sackler family and other groups heavily pushing oxycontin to a large extent by providing false information on its safety and potential for addiction and abuse. Then there are folks who sold the drug to others illegally. Guess who is more likely to get jail time.

I think it depends quite a bit on far one might want to stretch the terms. Drug discovery tends a bit on that side as often the discovery pipeline is often not quite as targeted as one might think. One might look for a compound that binds to a certain target but then the a use for it only emerges by some screening experiments with often unpredicted results. There are cases where these discoveries were hypothesis-driven. But the hypothesis was wrong. A historic example is potassium bromide. In the 19th century it was believed that masturbation might cause epilepsy and bromides were known to reduce the sex drive. So Charles Lockock speculated that using potassium bromide could curb the sex-drive, reduce masturbation and therefore reduce epipleptic convulsions. As it turned out, potassium bromide does indeed reduce convulsions, but obviously not by inhibiting masturbation. Potassium bromide had been in use as sedative and anticonvulsant into the 20th century until better drugs came along. Another perhaps more prominent example is sildenafil (viagra) which originally was a candidate to dilate blood vessels in the heart and alleviating chest pain by blocking the phosphodiesterase type 5. But as we now know it actually dilated vesels elsewhere more effectively... In the microbiological field there are certainly discoveries which came from observations and might as such be considered not based on a specific theory, but I am not sure whether that fits the bill quite as well, as in biology hypotheses where where often built after making empirical observations. A lot are thrown out and the few survivors might appear to be a chance finding, while in truth it is simply based on the scientific process.

! Moderator Note Considering that cartoons are not tethered to reality it is rather pointless trying to discuss the the underlying physics of the fake realism. If one wants to discuss specific phenomena that are actually grounded in physical reality, please start a new thread. This one will be locked.

Is a paper referenced?

The previously referenced TOGETHER study has now also published the results of their ivermectin trial. It was a double-blind, randomized, placebo controlled study with 1,358 participants. Not surprisingly at this point no benefits for ivermectin intervention where demonstrated. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2115869

As already mentioned, the paper starts off with a replicating system. So that at least is not an issue. What exchemist pointed out is that because it starts off with a replicating system, it cannot address how the mechanism of self replication arose (something which the news article gets wrong). There are some issues with the idea of the RNA world (specifically with RNA being early or first replicators), related to their instability and the fact that enzymatic RNA (which are not the topic here) are fairly large. What the authors looked at is looking at evolution in once a self-replication system was established. If the youtube is not getting that right, it would really just fall in line of many other videos which, to my dismay, are increasingly used non-critically by students.

It is always the little ones, isn't it? Could be an universal trait. I have heard that they also create hierarchies with other animals, if there are not enough alpacas around (one was apparently top sheep).