ojnabieoot

Maybe a reference would help - I'm not sure how this is a meaningful statement.

It seems that there could be many somewhat "generic" Western European jokes about despots which date back to Roman times. But without more information I can't think of any jokes at or about Hitler specifically that could possibly date back to the Romans.

> Presumably whatever anti-plagiarism software journals are using today is similarly limited.

Sadly, I am guessing the problem here is the anti-plagiarism software was never run, nor was the article ever even read. Especially given that the issues were found disproportionately in one specific journal, this seems to be outright corruption on both sides of the equation.

> if they do not protect against variants or breakthrough infections?

The vaccines do not provide absolute immunity but they very clearly and obviously provide protection against variants (dramatically reducing the hospitalization and death rate), and against breakthrough infections (dramatically reducing the likelihood of transmission). Your comment is just ignorant misinformation.

The fact that vaccines are not completely bulletproof is known to children and any adult who is interested in a good faith discussion about this: those who have had a flu vaccine are familiar with the very mild form of the flu you can still get. The symptoms are far milder than an unvaccinated flu infection, but vaccines boost your immune system. They do not make you superhumanly immune to disease, and it's preposterous to hold the COVID vaccine to an impossibly high standard.

If I were the union I would take the opportunity to campaign on this. Say that Amazon’s leadership is so untrustworthy that they tried to rig an election they probably would have won fair and square - and, more importantly, that the federal government under Biden might actually have your back if AMZ tries to retaliate against you.

The problem is that the election was clearly unfair and there was a widespread sense that the people voting in it thought it was unfair. A 70-30 vote in an election where you know the authorities are watching means absolutely nothing.

As for this:

> The evidence seems to be based on the word of a single employee. If that's enough evidence to overturn an election, it will be hard to have one that isn't overturned.

You are reading this very myopically, ignoring crucial context with a sliver of the article (and not being helped by some weak writing). The snippet should be read as this:

> Myers’ recommendation centers on the mailbox [which was unquestionably on Amazon’s headquarters and which Amazon management unquestionably pressured employees to use for voting], according to one of the people familiar with it. During the NLRB hearing, an employee said Amazon security guards used keys to open the mailbox, testimony that former NLRB chair Wilma Liebman said could be reason enough to overturn the result.

So there was plenty of direct evidence suggesting improper behavior, which not even Amazon contested. That was not enough to overturn the result. But just the one piece of deeply serious eyewitness testimony on top of the documentary evidence would be enough. And of course there was far more evidence than just that one employee: Liebman’s comments are obviously a rhetorical device used to illustrate the severity of Amazon’s transgressions and not a literal description of the merits of the case.

I think you misread it. I believe they mean that among the coastal nations, the US ranks 3rd in terms of polluting its own coastline. I also don’t have access to the paper, but the number 2 coastal nation then pollutes its own coastline worse than the US.

For me (as someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia): as a child I had a lot of flickering lights/shadows and brief whispers/noises, horrible depth perception, frequent dizziness, and bad temperature coordination (sweating or shivering way too much in response to weather).

One particular indication which I thought was universal but is apparently somewhat uncommon: visual “snow” in low light conditions, meaning that dark rooms look like grey TV static to me. (When my eyes are closed in the dark I usually just see black.)

I do feel the focus on lobbyists and corruption distracts from the more serious problem: part of the solution will have to involve reducing certain luxuries for many upper-middle-class people: less real meat, less AC in the summer, less driving, much more expensive clothing and furniture, etc. ExxonMobil isn’t the problem here, it’s ordinary citizens who don’t want to make the sacrifice. And the problem isn’t “corrupt politicians” so much as “politicians who want to win elections,” aka all politicians. And “we simply have to elect liars who are guaranteed to lose their election after betraying their voters” isn’t an option.

The process will certainly involve some pain and serious injustices, even if it’s necessary for the long term. Reducing meat consumption in particular is one that won’t be solved by electric generation technology, and lies directly on powerful cultural fault points in the US/Canada (“it’s the hippies and college professors who took your pork chops and bankrupted our hard working farmers!”). And eventually we will simply have to ban beef and pork.

The idea that Elon Musk is spending 35 hours a week (or even 20) engineering at SpaceX is preposterous. He is blatantly lying here, or pretending a few hours of doodling each week constitutes “chief engineering” work.

People are focusing on the pettiness and timing but the US government had very good reasons to do this (and other countries should follow suit):

1) The increasing commercialization of spaceflight provides many opportunities for unscrupulous grifters seeking to con scientifically illiterate millionaires, potentially at great risk to human life. Governments really should clamp down on who is and isn’t qualified to call themselves an astronaut.

2) As someone who supports companies like SpaceX being involved in space exploration: it is extremely gross for the focus to the on the personal feelings and childish fantasies of three billionaires, one of whom is notorious for blatantly abusing his employees, the other notorious for blatantly lying to his customers[1]. Branson seems by comparison to be an ok person... but he’s not an astronaut, and it’s disrespectful to real astronauts to suggest otherwise.

[1] While Bezos at least seems to acknowledge that he bought his ticket, the fact that Elon Musk still calls himself “Chief Engineer” at SpaceX is an embarrassment, and a slap in the face to all the engineers who actually show up to do work at SpaceX.

> why Summers is still remembered as an egregiously noteworthy case of incipient cancel culture.

Come on, man. If you’re the president of an organization and you get yourself into a situation where the majority of your women employees think you’re a reactionary bigoted jerk, then it doesn’t really matter if you actually deserved it or if you merely made a PR mistake. It doesn’t even matter if it’s due to an unfair media feeding frenzy! You are the president and you badly failed in your mission to lead that organization.

Summers absolutely deserved to lose his job as president (which was a voluntary resignation). Even if you give him the greatest possible benefit of the doubt, his actions were profoundly irresponsible leadership. And he didn’t lose tenure, he just lost a cushy side gig. Other university/corporate presidents have lost their job for far less.

This is what I said:

> Specifically, [the “variability hypothesis”] is a bold scientific claim that contradicted current and 2005-era understanding of human biology, and requires far more evidence than some economist’s musing. Summers was wrong (factually and morally) to suggest otherwise and Pinker was wrong to defend it.

It is very much a Flying Spaghetti Monster problem: at this point the preponderance of evidence is that there is no inherent difference in the reasoning abilities of men and women, and that any measured difference is much more easily explained by societal factors than genetics. The default hypothesis is that there is no difference and I have not seen any convincing evidence otherwise - evidence which purports to show a difference is always tainted beyond usefulness.

Your argument is equivalent to the observation that I haven’t personally mapped out all of Earth’s orbit so how can I prove there’s no Flying Spaghetti Monster? It is not very convincing!