CharonY

Or to put it simply, one shouldn't confuse fitness in the common use with the highly specific meaning with respect to evolution (i.e. reproductive success). Evolution really doesn't refer to speciation, though speciation is one possible consequence of evolutionary actions. In the most specific sense, evolution refers to a change in the gene pool over time, which can happen rather rapidly. Drift and strong selection could cause such big changes, especially in small population. A more technical way to look at is that evolution happens whenever Hardy-Weinberg conditions are not met.

What would she do there, though? While they are occupied by the Russians and there is ample evidence of war crimes, afaik they are not actively starving the population. Also while I think counting deaths is not the greatest measure for a wide range of reasons, In the Ukraine about 20k civilians died in Ukraine and among those were over 700 children according to OHCHR estimates (2022-2025). While in the regions there is an increase in food security, reported numbers where as high as 40 % (some reports put it closer to 20%, likely on the precise definition) having to cut down on food consumption (e.g. skipping meals https://www.wfp.org/news/three-years-war-ukraine-one-third-population-frontlines-regions-struggle-find-enough-eat). UN food programs are active in that region. Numbers are difficult to obtain for Gaza with some UN counts outpace those of the Gazan authorities. Israel estimates about one civilian death per combatant, others put it higher. But even taking Netanyahu's numbers, which folks generally do not take seriously, the number of civilian deaths was at 16,000 by May 2024. Around a third were estimated to be children. Since then the death toll only has increased and the only increased. Meanwhile, the only food available is external and distribution (including UN programs) have been severely restricted by the IDF. While there are approved activities by the IRC, they identified severe shortcomings. This has dramatically increased malnutrition about half a million are under extreme food security risk and an assessment of 250 households identified: Nearly three in five families reported being unable to find bread or fresh food, More than 60% said they were struggling to access drinking water, and Nearly two-thirds said that canned food was disappearing from markets. https://www.rescue.org/uk/press-release/malnutrition-rates-gaza-skyrocket-irc-warns-israels-new-plans-humanitarian-aid https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1252 Again, I do not think a lot is to be gained by making this comparison as both are in very different situations. As such, I feel that it really drifts into whataboutism region. We can also look at organizations operating in both regions. For example World Central Kitchen (a great organization, btw.) has provided food in both, Ukraine and Gaza. But in Gaza workers were killed by the IDF and eventually stopped operations as they ran out of supplies.

The broader tactic here is also to create fear and even if the courts manage to do something, it is designed to put pressure on folks and forcing them to pre-obey.

Might be, but I interpreted as suicidal in form of nuclear suicide vs individual action. But again, I concede that I might have interpreted the exchange wrongly. The question to me is really how much of that is real or just part of saber-rattling. But to be honest, I am not certain of anything in this climate. During the cold war we were only a tick away from nuclear annihilation if not cooler head(s) prevailed (even if just barely). In the 2000s I would have dismissed it as unthinkable. Nowadays, I wouldn't be surprised if someone would just do whatever chatgpt tells them to (that is, after all what the US administrations seems to do).

Wasn't that referring to the use of nuclear weapons? It is a bit of a difference to convince folks to kill and die for a cause, and another one to blow up everyone (including their families). Unless of course I am misinterpreting the exchange. Going back to the nuclear argument, the question is always how "mad" the dictators really are (Putin is another example). And there is also the consideration of how these conflicts might actually increase nuclear proliferation. Russia's attack and Trump's stance have changed or at least softened anti-nuclear deterrent sentiments in Europe, for example.

This again is a result of parroting factoids without actual analysis or actual reading on the subject. Only by taking massive shortcuts would one arrive at the notion that societies are not male-dominated because of a handful notable women. It is just being ignorant of history or society and is a malaise of seeking superficial knowledge without putting in the work. Obviously women always played an important role in society, but their role was/is frequently diminished. Importantly power structures were set up by men, with deep impacts in all kinds of aspects. There is a reason why medical data for women is still lacking, for example and it wasn't too long ago that institutions realized that we need better data for women. Similar is true for racialized minorities, but especially for women in that group. Now we see that that little progress we are making getting reversed by a strongly patriarchal administration. Following their logic, male mental health should be improving rapidly and I have serious doubts that we are going to see that.

No, the numbers you cited I am pretty sure are not from a study but are directly pulled from the CDC database. It does not meant that they are better or worse, but they are just a data collection as such and are not a study in itself. The latter often have specific cohorts or have some further analyses attached. In the study I mentioned they focused on a cohort of folks who actually verifiable attempted suicide, and investigated the means they used, for example. Oh, you are right, things went off topic a fair bit. But the answer to that is that yet again, folks, again have co-opted an issue and use it as an excuse for being racist/fascist. Specifically, it is a common tactic to avoid accountability and place the blame somewhere else.

That is not how statistics work. You might refer to a particular data set (e.g. CDC).

Nope, I was thinking about a couple of studies which looked at suicide methods. The reported frequency differences was usually between 1.5-4 ish. And older paper by Tsirigotis et al. (Med Sci Monit. 2011 Aug 1;17(8):PH65–PH70.) mentioned about 3 fold, for example. It is not necessarily a cutting off, just a weaker social structure in general. As to relevance it is a direct response to. As I said, trends in mental health try to address exactly that. I.e. attempts to strengthening bonds. I have heard of initiatives to get folks at risk to get them involved in activities for example. But the bigger point to me at least is that the sample mentioning of higher suicide rates means little in isolation. Rather, an analysis of the underlying reasons are more appropriate as opposed to an overinterpretation of a single data point. I have only read a little bit mostly because I got into a discussion with a clinical psychologist a long while ago, but even I am aware that there is a huge body of lit to sift through.

The original post is a few years old and around that time we started to have couple of issues which we assumed was due to supply chain issues (it was a weird time for many things). But if there are recent issues that is concerning. We had some trouble with RNA extractions recently, but we have been using Eppendorf plate. But I attributed that to personnel changes for now. Potentially need to run some additional quality checks...

That is just a commonly cited statistic without any more in-depth analyses. But as mentioned before, women tend to attempt suicide at rates at up to 4 times that of men. One should also add that the also mentioned use of drug and poison also has folks speculating whether suicide by women could be undercounted. Some overdoses might be ruled as accidental, especially if the dosage was not massive an/or in the absence of other indications of suicide. There might be more explanation for the so-called gender paradox, but in my mind the means of suicide is the most compelling one. This is actually an area of active research and the short answer seems to be yes, but it takes time, effort and money. Which is not saying much, I know. But part of that is active outreach as folks tend to cut off their social circle and men are generally more comfortable with not being in touch (or to put it differently, they tend to spend time to ensure that they remain in touch).

I still think that having Miller in the WH is more of a problem than teenagers shitposting. The latter might or might not grow out of it.

Conduct a quick search on this forum, I have mentioned relevant papers a few times. But that is a well known observation and you can find it referred to as gender paradox in suicide. If you are actually interested in reading on that that I can provide you some lit. Why, what is the relevance of stupid kids? I thought we established that the issue is folks in power. This is part of the toxic masculinity argument. There is a need to define healthy version which doesn't prevent to be being themselves but also allowing self-care. Current version, especially those propagated in the manosphere are leading to detrimental result, hence the "toxic" moniker. Edit: and one more thing at issue. Often the research in mental health has been led with men used as the norm (similar to other aspects of health research). As a consequence, understanding of what normative behaviour is and where mental health issues begin is somewhat skewed. It also impacts diagnoses to some traits like autism or ADHD. It is not that long ago when it became clear that gendered research is necessary with larger and more diverse cohorts. Of course the current US government is restricting this type of research.

We have talked about this in multiple places on this forum and to a certain degree that statistic is misleading. The suicide attempt rate is roughly the same (some statistics have slightly higher attempts with women). But the methods are different. Men tend to use more violent and effective methods such as guns, whereas women prefer poisoning. The latter has a high failure (i.e. survival) rate. The second part is more relevant. Men are are less likely to seek help as it is considered unmanly. This squarely falls into the toxic masculinity concept (i.e. concepts in masculinity that end up being harmful). A big issue is that men also don't like to talk about that. Here women have the "advantage" of being assumed to be "weaker" . However, they obviously face issues in other areas especially related to bodily autonomy.

In your prior posts you referred to a few bad apples and that only time you witnessed that behaviour was from teenagers. My larger point is that this just happens to be the group you are more familiar with but the issue is much broader and goes beyond either a few apples or a few teenagers. This does not invalidate your experiences, just saying that this is a limited view on the overall matter. Framing the issue as just or even mainly coming form a few basement-dwelling teenagers is just off.

And again, that is not a kid's problem only. I think this an often-used and frankly useless argument (and frequently used as an excuse), similar to the lonely men epidemic claim. There is some truth to the claim, but it is less that they are not supported, but rather that they build barriers themselves. Now there are real issues but at the same point the affected folks are also fairly resilient to improvement This attitude seems associated with a toxic view on manliness thus prohibiting them to seek help when they need it. That being said, these racist attitudes are not a matter of mental health in the first place. There are many factors ranging from true racialized ideologies to disenfranchisement and the all to common search for a convenient scapegoat. Also of note, kids nowadays dislike picking up a book and read. But this is going seriously off-topic.

You can call them teenagers, yet they are elected politicians and big chunk of the electorate. It might make you feel better if you characterize them as powerless kids, but they are not. The fact that kids are also part of it should not be used as a means to ignore the much more dangerous adults with the virtually the same ideology. Kids got it from somewhere. Just because this is the demographic you are mostly interacting with, does not make it the whole thing. The really depressing thing is that if anything it shows that this old ideology, which for a while was more associated with older, more conservative demographic, is now also attractive for kids (and more dominantly, male kids).

I think you might be referring to the possee comitatus act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act)? The way I understand it, it refers mostly to federal troops (i.e. the marines). The National Guard can be used (and has been in the past), though conventionally not against the State governor's wishes. Though the last time it happened was under Johnson, who used the National Guard to protect the civil rights movement. Basically a reversal of what has happened here. I have seen quite a bit of coverage of the demonstrations and protests as well as legal analysis on the use of troops. While one can always argue that folks could do a better job I am not necessarily sure what a terrible job (and hence, what a better job) would be in this context.

That is simply not true ts. First, anti-immigrant sentiments have always been simmering everywhere, but the slogan you mentioned has become more prevalent. The far-right AfD in Germany is second-strongest party in Germany, for example. I.e. while much of it is driven by young men, it is far beyond just some teenagers. If talking about race issues, there were always distinct differences, where Europe tended to have a more etho-centric approach to identity, whereas the US and Canada had more recognition and integration of immigrants. That being said, racism was heavily skewed against certain demographics, especially Indigenous and, in the US, Afro-Americans (and an assortment of other groups). The history is uneven, with Europe having more systemic issues which were at least ostensibly race-neutral, whereas in the US it took a while to roll back at least some of the most clearly racialized policies. But when it comes to improvement, how can you possibly look at what the GOP and ICE is doing and characterize it as bad apples? These folks that you characterized as pissy teenagers either have grown up or were already old and have taken over various positions of power across the world. The saying goes that few bad apples spoil the bunch. Guess what, the bunch is spoilt.

To both points I think we are dealing with a profoundly new situation related to how information flows through our society. A hallmark of dictatorships of the past was the direct control of media. In today's fractured information system, this is no longer necessary. Folks increasingly become passive receivers of information fluff, making them believe that they gained information, but ultimately they don't. Couple that with the easy but wrong and superficial answers from AI, we are dealing with an increasingly bigger disconnect between facts and perception. The authoritarians thrive in this environment, as they never cared much for fact to begin with. The traditional democratic system face a critical challenge. Either lean into this environment and become demagogues themselves, or stay principled and risk continued loss of power.

Generally speaking, limitations in data, i.e., related to screening, healthcare access etc. make it very difficult to compare cancer rates if the health system has very different standards. There is a reason why some of the lowest cancer rates are found in some of the poorest (and/or war-torn) countries. Cancer is sufficiently complex that one can project a lot of assumptions and beliefs on it, often with weak data (which to some degree is also true to the related issue of nutrition).

I think the way the traditional mechanisms still work is not to stop the power grab- we have seen evidence of them failing. However, we have seen that they (especially the judiciary) are slowing things down. I do not yet see a realistic pathway to truly get martial law going, but we still have some time to go.

Sure, though to me the most important bit is the cautionary aspect of it and the parallels in missteps. Examples include the mistaken idea that one can utilize extremism, without paying a price or the assumption of certain norms (which are stronger in the US now then they were the case then in Germany as the country was still in the middle of redefining itself). While there are folks who take the situation very seriously, the changing media landscape and social media makes it very difficult, if not impossible to create consensus on the simplest issues. That, among other things is fueling extremist, especially on the far-right end (as they have a better grip in using the system) makes it really difficult to enact countermeasures. Again, the midterms will be a watershed moment, one way or the other.

This is of course mostly just for fun, but I would say a bit earlier than that. The fact that Hitler was arrested is just too much of a neat parallel with Jan6 and the fact that the US is run by a convicted felon. I am thinking maybe 1932? At that point Hitler gained broader support among industrialist (now techbros) and getting money from that side. While the SA was banned, Hitler managed to unban them in 32 (Jan6 crowd) and the NSDAP became the largest party in the elections with over 30%. Of course Hitler only became chancellor in 1933 but much of the groundwork on the right was done (with the mistaken belief of being able to control him). Though we can also take the happenings in LA as an attempt to get a Reichstagsbrand going. But of course, this is just looking at parallels for the decline, either way, it ain't pretty. And again, the shocking bit is that it defies the long-held assumptions of the particular strengths of US democracy.

One should also add that credentials also do not really mean much, if someone with credentials proposes something silly (we also had that here) that idea will be taken apart just as well. This is part of the mechanism.