CharonY

Yeah, I was curious about that and there are reports of a fairly wide range of issues. But essentially in all cases they need significant subsidies. But assuming that there are indeed addressing issues, these might be worth it.

The slide is not inevitable, but Norway is not a particular good example as the far right Progress party had the highest vote count ever. While Geert Wilder's party lost seats, they were still tied. Granted it suggests that in the respective parlamentarian system shifts are possible (though the PVV remains in second place). Another example could be Poland, where the the opposition managed to form a government coalition pushing the right-populist PiS out of power (which still holds the most seats, just not the majority). But in the presidential election, a PiS-backed candidate won. I think the one thing that typically happens is that once populist parties are in power, they generally mess things up as most are just not very competent and are driven by ideology, rather than good policy ideas. In parallel, they are also often ignored by moderate parties. I think only within the last 10-15 years did they get enough votes in at least some countries so that they were impossible to ignore. Moreover, they have started to dismantle accountability measures and have been better at using propaganda (especially via social media) to distort reality to such a degree that voters somehow become unable to see the failures as what they are. The US is a highly visible variation of it and I think to some degree, because it is a different country some folks have an easier time spotting that than within their own. And another point on the super-rich. In some cases their wealth is now larger than that of many nations, resulting in massive powers without control. Add to that those folks also control, directly or indirectly, modern information consumption and public discourse, it sure looks dystopian.

I am a bit less optimistic. If not that, folks would have weaponized other elements. While neoliberalism also got a hold of Europe, radicalization also happened. There is always disenfranchisement that can be leveraged and I just think folks got better at doing that. Or conversely, population resilience against such movements have diminished.

They worked a long time on in, but the progress was slow. It feels that in the last decade or so, things accelerated. Whether due to accumulated power or just something else happening is not quite certain to me, But, it is important to note that this is not just an US thing. Brexit was already mentioned and in addition, there are a lot of countries that have slid into autocracies in Europe and elsewhere. I am not saying that they can all be tracked to the same reason, but collectively they are part of a larger trend.

I think this thread hits certain notes that are both, silly and dead serious. The world is changing at the whims of folks who are not masterminds but for the most part horrible manchildren. As a result, the premise of OP should be ridiculous, but given that rationality is bleeding out of the world, the likelihood seems nonzero, as it otherwise should be. To quote the mightiest British King (but referring to the world as a whole): "It is a silly place". Resulting in Quebec detaching itself from the continent. And mandating that English languages is only allowed to be printed in Braille.

BC will take in refugees, but only hipsters. Alberta will try to join the red states, First Nations in Alberta will let them join but keep the land beneath them. Saskatchewan will try to announce that they will join, but get too drunk to remember which side, but to be fair, no one remembers Saskatchewan. Or Manitoba. Ontario will write a stern letter to both sides, asking them to cut it out, and Doug will post a mean meme. But they are too busy fighting their own war against bicycles, speed cameras, and Toronto. Quebec will use that as an excuse to cut themselves from English-speaking Canada. According to a study New Brunswick is too busy hating itself. PEI will get ready for war, all three of them. But they have to go fishing on the weekend. Newfoundland and Labrador: they made an oral commitment. But since no one can understand them it is unclear what it was. The territories send the most ferocious moose and bear-mounted force but they will not arrive before the end of the war. But realistically, Canada would likely close the borders and hunker down, like everyone else. Either that, or just burn down the White House again. Trump has already started.

Also, a lot of of weird things can be made into belief systems. While cults are probably the most obvious examples, there are a lot of movements (anti-vaccination, diets, various pyramid schemes and so on) which build a whole belief system based on little to no data, a lot of assumptions and, inevitably, some sort of grift. (The number of podcasters selling their protein powder is too darn high!).

Also, right hands. I am fairly sure that it breaks his mind a bit that people of colour can get a Nobel but he doesn't get one.

The way it is explained to me is that there is a list somewhere associated with security risks. I forgot the details but in the list for biosecurity there were things like knowledge about certain pathogens, use of fermenters, freeze dryers and a couple of random other things. The reasoning is that this knowledge is useful for building bioweapons (and kimchi).

That is just not true. That would somewhat require all languages came into existence fully formed

I think expecting reason from an administration that not only a non-existing white holocaust in SA and then trying to make it reality by inviting refugees is a bit of a tall order. Also, I would not be surprised if they use AI or some other stupid pattern-based method to flag folks from certain "undesired" countries where they assume some risk of overstaying. But one would only really see that if one looks at broader patterns, a Nobel Laureate is of course a special consideration. If it is targeted, one possibility is that Soyinka was incarcerated in the wake of the civil war. Even before this administration, the US does flag individuals in some cases often without further understanding of the situation. For example, a microbiologist who has ever used a freeze dryer (a very standard piece of equipment) could add a few flags already.

Yeah, what a mystery. In all seriousness, I suspect that they are starting to flag repeat visits from countries where folks do not have the right shade of mayonnaise. It seems to be part of a larger effort of ehm, "diversity" efforts by the administration. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/politics/trump-refugee-white-people.html

I know that this is in the philosophy section, but it sounds more like you are talking about pattern recognition in the brain. And fundamentally it is constructive process, in a way it tries to create an output based on sensory inputs, but also what is present in memory as well as the current state of mind. If afraid, for example cues are more likely to be interpreted as dangerous, for example. But there is no right or wrong at that point as only in hindsight (which means following a corrective pattern matching process) can the brain figure out whether something was identified rightly or wrongly. The interview situation seems to be rather different to the scenario outlined in OP, though (and is more philosophical in nature).

I think it depends on the context and time a fair bit. Independent scientists outside of academia or industry are very rare and were probably more common until sometime around the 19th century but Lovelock could be such a rare example. At least considering the period where he was self-funded. Before that he did consultant work, IIRC where it would be considered a private entity but not entirely independent as such. Most folks would rather fall into externally funded, but usually academia-affiliated group. One of the reasons being that most public funds require some sort of affiliation (to reduce risk of money funneled to grifters, for example).

In academia an independent researcher is a specific designation for a PhD-level person not on a traditional faculty track (which is usually a mix of some sort with teaching and research duties), but which is not associated to someone who is (like a postdoc). They are not terribly common, but can include folks leading core facilities, or so-called research professor positions. They often are soft-money based, (i.e., externally or service funded), but there are exceptions. In the online world this designation takes a different meaning, usually referring to folks to lazy to understand the basics and diving right into WAG. Doing "a research" here often means casually watching random videos until they consider themselves an expert.

I think for those things one would need to start looking at the structure in more detail. DNA is fairly flexible but much is due to the helical backbone. Intercalation between base stack does bend the structure for example, but imagine it as "filling" is, at least to me, more confusing. It is more inserting into tight stacks and creating a partial unwinding of the helix or sometimes a just a bending. Also, not terribly important, but since students sometimes do that, I have to note that one shouldn't confuse agar with agarose. Especially if one does not want to spend time cleaning up the gel chambers.

I would assume that oxygen is actually fairly soluble in vegetable oil at RT. I am not sure specifically about vegetable oil, but in most lipids (IIRC) the dissolved oxygen at a given temp and pressure was always significantly higher than in water. I think what you are looking at is a bit if a physics questions. I.e. the diffusion of the respective compounds through at the lipid/water interface. If you have little headspace, and a sufficiently large oil volume and either a small surface area with the liquid beneath and/or a significantly slow diffusion rate, most of the oxygen in the headspace could be contained in the oil, with little being released via diffusion. There, the with sufficient abundance of facultative anaerobic bacteria the oxygen is likely going to be consumed before the yeast gets a chance.

I don't think that this platform has essential oils activated. Would need a higher subscription tier than we have.

One aspect where influencers are good at is manipulating emotion. There is an increasing body of lit that shows how misinformation is linked to emotional responses and that truthfulness and facts only play minor, if any role. The authors of a recent paper have written an article on their findings. In short there are folks who virtue signal by perpetuating known (even to them) falsehoods. (https://theconversation.com/winning-with-misinformation-new-research-identifies-link-between-endorsing-easily-disproven-claims-and-prioritizing-symbolic-strength-265652) Regarding OP: As others have noted, whether a discussion makes sense heavily depends on what you want to get out of it. There will be cases of (preciously few) good faith debates. But as outlined above, there are also plenty of cases where the facts deliberately don't matter and it becomes a performance.

Maybe, but there is also maybe something else at play. There are certainly different ways to read it. For example, it is possible that in Italy and Germany conservative forces held sufficient power so that the ideologically similarly aligned fascist movements could be gain power in a somewhat "regular" way. Another possibility is because at that point fascist held power in Germany and Italy, they thought that a violent grab to power was possible or perhaps even inevitable. Again, I am pretty sure someone has looked into it, but I certainly didn't. I strongly suspect that this is at least some part of it. And especially among young folks I hear a lot of of disillusionment when it comes to the capitalist system, heavily fueled by the affordability crisis and that most won't be able to afford houses as even their parents did. This makes them naturally being interested in finding someone to blame and solve the problem. And generally speaking the centre tends to try to maintain some sort of status quo, whereas more extremist voices purport solutions (whether real or not). It is part of the reason why especially young men have shown a swing to the right (including MAGA), which generally provides an outlet for grievances and often promises easy (if unrealistic) solutions. In fact we see that play out in real time, and I do wonder how long it takes until folks realize they have been had. Especially the working class is going to feel the financial squeeze. While this all seems rather similar to what we have been discussing, it is also of note that there are not real extreme left powers of relevance in the US, so there is some uncharted territory.

It feels that there is a resurgence of Marxism, especially as society is barreling towards exactly what he has been worried about (with some modern twists). To large degree it is fueled by recent economic crises, but perhaps most importantly, by rising inequality which goes beyond a more qualitative difference. Add to that that we are entering a new era where it is entirely unclear whether labor is worth anything, and where somehow all the wealth apparently is generated virtually it might be time to rethink how the economy is and isn't working for people.

There are no ratios. 1:2 refers to the distance between the first genus on your table compared to the second. So, Racophorus : Polypedates. If you look at the listed traits all are identical except webbing. So the difference except webbing is 0 (i.e. no distance/identical). The difference in webbing is "full" vs "partial". Here it boils down how you evaluate that difference. If you think that full vs partial is the same as full vs absent, then the score would be the same (e.g., 1). If you think full vs partial is less of a difference, then you could e.g. score it with a 0.5. You would follow the approach for all possible combinations (hence, the matrix shape).

Yes, but these armed conflicts were not directed at the government, rather they stoked dissent and fought political rivals. In fact, both ingratiated themselves with that with parts of the government. The Beer Hall Putsch failed and Mussolini didn't really expect to succeed. Though to be fair, Italy was politically in a more precarious situation plus due to the outsized power of the King, the decision was more based on individual decision than governmental consensus. Hitler was a different issue. They did not fear his powers, it was more down to fears of socialism and strong influence by conservative industrialists and elites to convince Hindenburg. They explicitly did not see the brownshirts as a threat to them and they assumed quite openly that Hitler would be a controllable way to undercut socialists influence over the workers. With respect to the SA, prior to Hitler's appointment their influence was mostly minimal. They functioned mostly as the equivalent of party security and fought mostly with hecklers and political enemies who would show up at meetings. Essentially they were beer-hall brawlers who would also go on and disrupt meetings of other parties. Especially the KPD and other communists groups were doing the same. But these fights were not considered major civil disruptions, if you look at newspapers of that time, it was just kind of a thing folks expected from the working class. They were also racketeers to make fund their actions. But the bottom line is that their influence at that point was not seen as a threat to the ruling class, rather a means to maintain power over revolutionary influences. One way of reading is that a lot of the political strife was focused on leveraging or suppressing the rising influence of the working class due to democratization processes. One the one hand the KPD and associated more revolutionary inclined groups, the NSDAP on the right wing and the SPD in the center, which pursued a strictly legal course of action (and eventually lost ground). Similar arguments have been made for Mussolini, but I have not read enough to get a real sense. However, Mussolini also organized his groups as anti-communist forces and afaik, there was no clearly formed program. But there are bits and pieces of his reasoning (other than desire for power) that also explain his falling out with the Italian socialist party. One of the key elements is that in contrast to most socialists, Mussolini did not believe in equality using an early version of (I believe) misinterpretation of Nietzsche's "Uebermensch". He did believe in ethno-state land ownership and was (in contrast to the party) in favour of WWI. Now, while the march to Rome was a show of force, this and prior actions did not threaten the King as such. A key element here is the political instability following the election of 1921, where the Socialists, Catholics and the National Bloc (anti-socialist coalition, including Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento) having pretty much the similar number of votes with the Socialists coming out a bit ahead. Bonomi was appointed as a moderate prime minister but his coalition pretty much fell apart. His successor (Facta) moving to the right had little success to govern, either. This weak government trying to keep communist revolutionary groups out of power eventually marked an opportunity for the National Bloc to gain power. As you mentioned, fascist paramilitaries started to gain power (already after the 1921 election) and after the switch to Facta, they increasingly engaged in provocations. Italian authorities did not engage them, in part because they were seen as anti-communist allies, but also because of the general impression that the army would support those groups (which, as mentioned, contained ex-militaries). Now the point that is debatable and I am sure there are good books on that matter is whether the March on Rome was a power grab, with King Emmanuel being afraid of a repetition of the Russian revolution, or whether it was a show of force to break nudge centrist-right rule and shift it further towards the fascists. But whatever it was, the core elements were laid down within the legal framework existing at that time, rather than a revolutionary violent uprising to destroy it. Again, the fully dismantling happened after seizing power and even then some elements remained.

I am sure that you will appreciate that the process can be as important as the outcome. After all, violent explosions killing people largely have the same outcome. But the reasons why those happen are varied and so are the means to prevent them. Even if we ignore ideological differences, there are historic differences how these systems came to power and those do shape how they act in a certain way and why. I will preface that the very end point, where absolute powers are invested into a single person things start look similar again but the path towards that is very different. I will also add that I am no clearly not a history scholar I am sure better learned people will point out how that is again a simplification and that there are important differences. However, my limited knowledge won't allow me much to speculate too much here. Let's start with Italy. It was a constitutional monarchy with significant powers invested into the king. The democratic structures were weak and few political actors beyond the left were really promoting further democratization. Following WWI and resulting social and political upheaval. something Mussolini was able to take advantage of to get himself appointed as prime minister following the famous March on Rome. At least superficially the desire for "law and order" and he spearheaded a strong anti-socialist stance, a group, as you noted, he originally belonged to. Many of his successes have the hallmark of a supreme opportunist, for example conveniently abandoning his anti-monarchist stance, once he saw a way to power. The anti-socialist was arguably also a way to align himself with the ruling powers in opposition to Marxist revolutionaries (though again, this is a quite a bit of an oversimplification). In contrast, race played originally only a minor if any role (there was an underlying Aryan supremacy with a goal to civilize inferior peoples but prior to the late 30s it was more of an undertone than policy. Somewhat similarly Hitlers rise to power in Germany were based on riding the popularity of grievances, but perhaps in contrast to Italy, more centrist powers led the governments and an outright quasi-revolutionary grab to power was cut short and he ultimately needed to get elected. With support from the right (which included significant contributions from a partially monarchist party) he presented himself with contradictory stances, such as being a champion of the working class, while presenting himself to industrialists as bulwark against working class uprisings. Both, (perhaps Hitler more then Mussolini) had to appeal to the broader population and played mostly originally within the legal confines of the system, just barely flirting with revolution. But in both cases, they started as a continuation of the existing democratic or quasi-democratic system and only started to dismantle them after their rise to power. They had to ride populist waves and did not have significant military might at their disposal but both are historic evidence how democratic structures can be effectively dismantled, how grievance politics can enable such events and also the role of outgroups in order to galvanize opinion, Meanwhile, the Russian and Chinese revolution were structurally different, marked by armed conflicts aimed at fully dismantling and replacing existing power structures via civil war. Here, the stories are more complex but the enemy in this case is less nebulous, the movements squarely targeted the Monarchy or Republic, respectively, though for different proximate reasons. Why do the differences matter? Well, looking at say Western societies, a revolutionary uprising is pretty much inconceivable. However, a populist-driven takeover of democratic structures, well, I have got a couple of examples.

I think an important element is that fascism is not a coherent ideology, but in many ways is just a way to appeal to the worst in a population to enable authoritarian rule. Unfortunately, this is why the method is quite effective and is pretty much part of any modern illiberal democracy. The nature of the outgroup is formed is pretty much arbitrary except they need minorities as they are either powerless or easily made powerless and they also have to be mistrusted. Another inconsistency in fascism is that they always are simultaneously very strong in a comical masculine way (see Hegseth's speech in front of military leadership), yet they are also the underdogs and oppressed by said minorities (which, at any given time are also part of some nebulous elites). Defining fascism, as the saying goes, is like nailing a pudding to the wall. But key elements are always authoritarianism (the strong man is central in all manifestations since inception), playing on grievances and other populist ideas and and generally also a strong element of nationalism, though some modern forms are less so and focus a bit more on race (at least implicitly).