CharonY

That is certainly true. Unfortunately these issues are not simple academic discourse, but also intersects with politics, public discourse and so on. It is unfortunate that (internet) celebrities tend to take away much of the oxygen for much needed debates. Unfortunately the internet, but also conventional media thrive from dissent. So uninformed radical takes get the front page, whereas folks investigating these issues are rarely even mentioned (especially not the difficult ones). In certain areas advances have been made, though up to a certain level there are still barriers. One issue is that it can vary quite a bit depending on are and system. In Germany, for example in the last decade the percentage of female professors increased from 10 to about 20%, which might sound like a steep increase. Yet, if you look closer, women are more likely to be on non-tenure track positions (i.e. these are non-permanent positions). What basically happened is that in order to address gender imbalance a system of what some might call "virtue signaling" has been implemented, which basically creates an illusion of catering for minorities but effectively being ignored where it counts. The good news is that when folks get used to such systems, some actually take them seriously. I still do not see it happening in Germany, but in parts of the US and Canada, it has been starting to make a dent, but it will take at least another decade to see whether these changes take hold. Obviously if we talk about a longer time span, say the fifties, yes attitudes have permanently changed. Though I would add that the baseline was pretty low to begin with.

Here, intersectionality comes into play. There is a long history where fights for equal rights resulted in infights. In the US, the civil rights movement experienced quite a significant amount of gender discrimination. I.e. fighting for black rights, often was exclusionary to women's right, and especially black women's rights. Fundamentally. as a society we need to take a careful look at our attitudes and structures to see where we are exclusionary and why and how that ultimately impacts us from the individual to the societal level. There can be disconnect between the ideals and of, e.g. the civil rights movement, and how individuals within in act and focus on. Fundamentally, that is also the idea with regard to diversity. There is the (potentially somewhat naïve) assumption that if leadership is sufficiently diverse, one would be more cognizant of conscious and unconscious exclusionary biases and issues. That, unfortunately requires that everyone involved has significant knowledge on the issue, which quite often requires more than personal experiences. But I do see it as a problem to use these fractures in order to discredit the principles of a given movement. I.e. even if there are feminists who are exclusionary, should we stop striving for a system where men and women have equal access to power? That being said, the society as a whole is clearly still created and dominated with a male-focused element when it comes to power and influence. Things like abortion rights but even maternity/paternity leave show limits of equality and are still elements that limit transition of women into leadership roles.

It is the fear of change. I have been learning quite a lot how different and challenging navigating competitive careers for women is from my wife as well as (former) bosses. I am mentoring quite a few women, too and it is obvious that there are still ongoing challenges. Yes, it is getting a bit harder for men, but this is because there is a desire to create a system that does not caters to them almost exclusively. We are still working with a patchwork system and it is certainly not perfect as attitudes have not really shifted that much among the powerful. But it might be changing. Conservatives don't like it as, well conservatism almost by definition likes to stick to things they were and folks like Peterson love culture wars because that is how they make their money nowadays.

In addition to the test itself, there are no guarantees regarding spread. It depends a lot on the viral load in the infected individuals and there is evidence that in vaccinated folks the viral load is lower on average (though not consistently so) and the risk of a boosted individual to get infected is cut down roughly by half (on average, there is a lot of variability here, too). It is also possible that it was a different variant that they were exposed to, where the vaccination is even more effective against. The whole host-pathogen interaction is subject to many stochastic factors (also including innate immune responses) so it might be impossible to figure out what ultimately happened. But if I were to hazard a guess I would think that having several doses of the vaccine would have played a significant role in it.

Well the issue is that these judges are ultimately supposed to interpret the US constitution, so fundamentally the required skillset is somewhat narrow. Moreover, it seems to me that in this area, there are few hard skills that one could scale them on. Due to the nature of the court, the personal background is likely going to play a significant role. Looking at e.g. Ruth Bader Ginsburg here. I.e. skill-wise there is little to distinguish them, but much of the vetting is based on personality. Kavanaugh was under fire after his partisan outburst during the hearings, where some of his legal supporters thought that this is unbecoming of a supreme court judge.

Eiot has been uninvited to the party due to ongoing abusive behviour. That is not nice, eh?

Looking for the best is an illusion for basically all even slightly complex jobs. One can define a set of suitable candidates, but ultimately figuring out the "best" within that pool is based more on gut guess than anything else. The real issue here is that traditionally we have the ominous "fit" as an important criterion. I.e. does a given person fit the role and the corporate culture. This has typically resulted in rather monolithic entities as someone who might have the same qualifications but somehow sticks out might result in a poor fit. Even perhaps 20 years back, a woman was seen as a poor fit for an academic career (in Germany). It was considered demanding and competitive and it was assumed that having a child would kill productivity. As a result we had and still have a 3:1 ratio of professors (M/W). In the US and Canada there was at least a discussion about that and the idea to boost gender equality has resulted in more parity. As a result, when I talk to students on either side of the pond, I see a big differences in how they see their ability and likelihood to pursue academic career. Moreover, increasing female faculty has not reduced overall productivity. And at least from anecdotes I have seen Germany lose quite a few talented female researchers due to the system who went on to have stellar careers overseas (I worked with some of them). In other words, the desire to find the "best" is often just a gatekeeping systems that selects not for the best in terms of abilities, but more in terms of conformity.

Just for clarification, boiling does not activate spores, they are just not killed. They germinate once they are in favourable conditions. It is actually also not that straightforward with other pathogens, easier. We found that some Salmonella survive heating as done in certain food processing protocols. Many toxins are heat resistant, so once the bacteria start producing it, heating might not render it safe. But you are also right that individual risks vary and these rules are to minimise risk.

Ah sorry, I think I went off a tangent and kind of forgot your original comment and its context. I apologize for that. If you are referring to the quote from the paper regarding randomness I would agree that they were overselling it a bit using that terminology. It is a way to make the manuscript "sexier" I guess.

No I get that, but it is also important to note that depending on context there are different levels of accuracy that one might want to apply. I suppose saying that mutations are non-directional rather than random would be more accurate (and now that I think about it, I would probably prefer it). At the same time though, the question is whether talking to laypersons it is necessary or even helpful to provide all the caveats and details. If we get to the point when talking about mechanisms or the concept of hot-spots, epigenetic regulation and so on, then certainly. But if someone just wants a short answer it might be overkill. Just changing "random" to another adjective is likely to be inaccurate, depending on context and how precise we want to be. In other words, I think that in common conversation we have to figure out how accurate we want or can be while still being understood.

It is a double-edged sword, though. There is evidence that if there is platform for these extremists ideas, rather than being isolated, they get normalized. I.e. spread can then accelerate to the point where folks want to force teachers to discuss the "both sides" of Nazi Germany.

I think I see your point. I think one would be very clear about the specific context to make sure which distinction one wants to make. Typically, the "random" is used as the opposite to "directed" mutations, where as a response to an environmental effect, genes are mutated towards a specific phenotype (such as in a Lamarckian model). However, if we discuss specific targets (say likelihood of one locus vs another) the "random" aspect might only be useful as a mentioned null.

Yes, so individually it is highly unlikely to be traced back to a specific source in this case. Exposure-related cancer is generally based on larger association studies, i.e. looking at groups that for whatever reasons have higher than normal exposure to the agent in question (an outbreak in Kenya was one of those studies providing much evidence for liver cancer) and/or in vitro or animal studies. Even with viral causes the discovery is often (at least intiially) based on associations (e.g. rate of a given form of cancer among infected vs non-infected folks), rather than tracking back the cause within a given individual.

I think the mechanism itself can be called "mutation" without an adjective. E.g. if you just refer to a change in the genetic sequence. Whether you want to add something else, would depend on the context. If you refer to random mutation, you might refer to a model where the mutation rates are uniform (which would be a null-hypothesis situation). An alternative use of random mutation is not based on site-specificity (it has been long known that there are e.g. hot spots, i.e. areas with higher mutation rates, for example), but on outcomes. I.e. mutations are random with respect to whether the result is beneficial, detrimental or neutral to the host. I think this is where OP might be a bit confused about.

I do not see studies associated with it, but there is an article from 2013 that a catering company was sued after several hundred folks got food poisoning. E. coli and Bacillus cereus were implicated, but no deaths reported. But B. cereus associated deaths are very rare. Similar to Shigella and STEC, the toxins are also heat stable, but tend to be less lethal (if memory serves). I was curious and wanted to see whether there are statistics on B. cereus but it seems that they are likely underreported because they are so commonly mild and folks often confuse them with other infections. Estimates for the US are around 25-60k annual cases (and estimates of ~20 hospitalizations and 0 deaths). Salmonella in comparison causes about 1.4 mio infections, 25k hospitalizations and about 400 deaths per year. Camplylobacter hovers around similar values in terms of infections, but around half the deaths. That is not to say that one should not keep an eye on B. cereus infections but it pales quite a bit to other common food-borne pathogens.

You have a number of misconceptions here. First, random mutations do not define evolution. As Arete pointed out, most mutations are neutral. Second, in the paper the beneficial or essential genes are actually protected from mutations. How about you read the paper you quoted? You can start with the header "Epigenome-mediated mutation bias" and go from there. There is some lit indicated there that you want to catch up on, too. And I doubt anyone serious considers a cell making conscious decisions. If you define consciousness that way, it becomes remarkably meaningless. Or rather, you would imply that you as a whole organism do not experience things much different than the individual cells in your body which is rather a bold statement. Assuming I am actually communicating with you rather than you hair follicles.

It is likely Bacillus cereus as StringJunky mentioned and not a mold. Bacillus is able to sporulate. However symptoms are mostly somewhat mild to moderate food poisoning. That being said, the same bacterium can also be found in pasta and wheat products. In either case, deaths are exceedingly rare (and I believe some of the prominent reports were traced back to pasta). Either product should not be kept at room temperature for prolonged time, but it is not quite as dramatic as some might believe (considering how common it is as a food staple). With regard to risk, Bacilllus growth moderately fast (a bit slower than E. coli) with an ideal temperature of around 37C. However, after cooking most bacteria would be dead and it takes a while until spores germinate and they start to replicate. Growth ceases once you hit ~10C, however they can produce two types of toxins even at suboptimal temps (as low as 10C, but at very low rate). With regard to outbreak frequency, it is one of the rare food-borne illnesses (E. coli and Salmonella are far more frequent) and it seems that at least major outbreaks were mostly associated with things like spaghetti with tomato sauce stored for a week (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3232990/), vegetable sauces and couple of others. So rice-related illnesses are potentially more common but too small-scale to be noticeable. There have been reports of contaminated rice with certain molds that produce aflatoxins (which are carcinogenic) but that is also rather rare (and resulted in recalls).

There are mechanisms that alter mutation rate. But consciousness does not play into it. Though we do not understand the concept of consciousness, it is generally accepted that some level of complex structures are involved (e.g. brains) and certainly does not extend to the cellular level. They are referring to observed mutation bias. I.e. that certain areas (which are critical to survival) seem to be more protected from mutations. The paradigm they refer to is that these areas would expect to mutate at the same rate as the rest of the genome, but if we look at subsequent generations, those mutants would not survive and we would see differences in mutation rate because of selection. In this paper they argue that those areas are protected via epigenetic functions, where for example repair enzymes are directed preferentially to those critical regions. Again, at no level consciousness plays a role. You also have to read the full paper. You cannot just take a sentence and imagine what it might mean.

Oh, yeah, obviously- ice hockey should have known. I wasn't aware that folks hated Trudeau since the 1920s, though.

When did nazis stop being the bad guys by default? Just making sure I am actually in the correct timeline?

So actually I wanted to say that the use of confederate flags points to racist who are too cowardly to fly e.g. the Nazi flag. But then there is this:

Yep.

It is likely that they are a bit hard to find, I copied the references from a pdf found via web of science. I have tracked down two DOIs that at least seem most closely related to your question (and they point to the missing ones), but I did not really spend time reading them. https://doi.org/10.1175/1520-0493(1961)089<0503:OTREAH>2.0.CO;2 https://doi.org/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877

Details of the model should be in the manuscript, and by skimming the references these look promising: - Kaplan 1960, Tellus 12,204-208 - Manabe and Moeller 1961, Mon. Wea. Rev. 89,503-532 - Moeller 1963, J Geophys Res 68,3877-3886 - Plass 1957, Quart J Roy Meteor Soc 82,310-324

For the life of me I don't understand how a podcast is news, but apparently Peterson was on one and provided his usual brand of word salad. https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/27/us/joe-rogan-jordan-peterson-climate-science-intl/index.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/27/word-salad-of-nonsense-scientists-denounce-jordan-petersons-comments-on-climate-models Incidentally, a while back I had a chat with an acquaintance from the psych department and he sent me an article from someone who was on the hiring committee. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html He also mentioned that Peterson's former work (especially alcoholism) was solid, his personality work was fine if one was into it (that field itself is at least somewhat controversial), but at some point he is selling is thoughts on matters outside his research area as facts (though to be fair, the big personality type models have sparked a whole industry of woo, so he is not alone in that, at least).