My supposition is that there isn't a true association, and that a larger sample size would get closer to the true mean. I think this is less a case like you're describing and more a case of distorted findings based on a few outliers driving the average.

“This” is whatever hypothesis you’ve tied your success to.

Some of the issues I’ve discussed above maybe are unique to pharma, where I work. And in no way did I mean to imply that academia isn’t a good career populated with almost all good people. Just that the incentive structure, which can affect good people too, is such that it encourages putting one’s best data forward, say. This is obviously a ton harder in a hugely collaborative gazillion dollar field such as the one you work in…Lot of small time scientists work sort of on an island.

Also, the bigger the claim, the easier it is to poke holes in. The superconductor thing reminds of this thing that happened maybe 10 years ago where a researcher in my field claimed she could make induced stem cells by just bathing them in acid in some specific way. Took like 5 minutes to rip to pieces. Some people really want that paper in Nature.

For real don’t mind me though. I’m just kind of a jaded asshole because of some experiences I’ve had when my (very well connected and basically bulletproof) data didn’t align with the big lab’s big money hypothesis. They’ll skewer you.

I'm always shocked by the laziness that goes into made up data. Like here you have multiples of a number. In bio you often see stretched or inverted images that are portrayed as individual replicates, say. You'd think that if you were going to go to the level of just plain cheating that you'd put your back into it. There are statistical tests, e.g., that can tell you with pretty good precision whether numbers are random, say, or whether a large group of numbers is spaced in a way you'd expect a natural set of data to be spaced (e.g., the frequency of small numbers increases with the size of the number). I doubt it would be that hard to fake a set of data if you reverse engineered it to pass the standard battery of smell-test statistics. But you never see that. Or maybe only the dumb ones get caught?

Don’t you have a hot wife and a cool job? Not sure what else you’re waiting for. Democracy? It’s so abstract.

Very prescient, in retrospect.

Thank you for definitively reminding me why I avoid such debates on the internet. I'll stop now.

Right, but think about the ambassador's words for a minute. Early in the war there was a lot of handwringing about Israeli soldiers shooting up a hospital. The fact is, when you suspect that there's a weapons cache inside a hospital, you try to enter it. When people start shooting at you from inside, then you shoot your way in. The trouble is that Hamas freely admits to using hospitals, schools and mosques as places to shield fighters and materiel. That's the context around what she's saying there. It's shitty, but you still have to leap a giant chasm to get from there to genocide (there's a good reason that Arabs can be doctors, lawyers and cabinet ministers in Israel, but Jews (not Israelis) aren't even allowed to be tourists inside many Muslim countries). From October 7 onward, Hamas could have saved every single Gazan civilian by offering an unconditional surrender. They haven't and they won't. That's on them.

You're arguing against a strawman. Nowhere did I say that the Netanyahu government is correct in their prosecution of the war. I said it's not a genocide, because it's aims aren't genocidal, they're statecraft. Pointing out how bad conditions are there isn't a counterargument.

Most of the narrative around the formation of Israel is not grounded in history, unfortunately. My guess is that you're unaware that net migration into the area that is now Israel between the beginning of the Zionist movement and 1948 was far higher among Arabs than Jews. That's due to the fact that (a) only Bedouins lived there until the Jews started irrigating the land, which suddenly made a backwater shithole arable for the first time in centuries, and (b) the British really didn't want to cede territory to the Jews, the "problem" of which they had already "solved" long before the rest of Europe.

But it's the same basic calculation there as in any total war, which is that your objective is complete capitulation of the enemy, knowing full well that a cease fire only delays and probably exacerbates the killing. In the case of Germany, Japan or Hamas, an unconditional surrender is the endgame. That differentiates it completely from other interethnic conflicts that were not about surrender but annihilation. The reason I'm hesitant to weigh in is that if I say, "this isn't genocide", it doesn't mean I think there's no moral culpability or that the objectives couldn't be satisfied in a less awful way. Maybe they can. I don't know the situation on the ground any better than you do. It's just not a genocide, no matter how people want to remember it, because the aim is the elimination of a government, not of a people.

Been trying my damndest not to get drawn into the Gaza shit, but there's no reasonable definition of "genocide" that applies here. One can argue about how they're prosecuting the war, but they're fighting a government who refuses to surrender. Today's Left would have accused the US of genocide in Germany and Japan in WW2. It's full and pure nonsense. In war, people die and it's sad. It doesn't make it genocide. And it's insulting to actual genocides that have taken place.

I have also realized, maybe about a year ago or so, that he'll never go to prison, no matter what. But a conviction on the J6 stuff might finally be enough to tank him in the election.

I think it's already tanking him. Sorry to play the perennial optimist, but if you look at the recent primaries, Trump has underperformed his polling, which I would argue is already really bad for an incumbent, by at least 5-10 points (so keep that in mind when you read he's "up" by 5 points or whatever on Biden, especially since incumbents typically poll badly early in the election year). His campaign may be inevitable, as we continually hear, but it's also a complete fucking catastrophe from a X's and O's point of view.

Meanwhile, the "uncommitted" vote we also have to endure endless commentary about actually wasn't that much higher than Obama's share of uncommitted in 2012, whereas total Biden votes dwarfed what Obama got. Basically what that says is that even though a lot of people in Michigan wanted to express dissatisfaction, way, way more people wanted to counter that narrative.

Last possible slot, because they decide their docket in the fall, and adding an additional case requires a time slot in which to hear the case. It's just procedure. I think you're looking for zebras here.

If I remember right, Trump tried to appeal directly to SCOTUS off the bat, correct? My guess is that Roberts wanted the weight of having district and appellate court opinions on his side before making a judgement. He cares about process, and he was probably terrified that a rushed judgement would just create more chaos, especially when Thomas and probably Alito voted in favor of Trump. They are less likely to go against the majority of the Court now that they would have to refute two absolutely bulletproof opinions. My guess is that Roberts really, really wants this case to be about the President, and not Trump per se. And in that case, it's his judgement that it should be considered with the full weight of their normal process without reference to what's happening in the world at this precise moment. Just a guess, but I think probably a good one.

So let me start by saying that I think SCOTUS is for the most part a group of a few decent thinkers and a slew of partisan hacks. Not going to argue otherwise. However, I actually think that they had to take the immunity case. They didn't get to test the BS about "If the president does it, it's not illegal" back in the 70s because of the Nixon pardon. They haven't had an occasion to do so since, so even though the lower courts basically laughed Trump out of court, I still think in the long run it's incumbent on Roberts to lay the smack down for any future presidents who claim to be above the law. Which is silly, I know, because the facile imagination one needs to possess to show how ridiculous that claim is basically makes it self-evident to anyone who isn't comatose (looking at you Justice Thomas). But still. Two president-crooks have tried to make the claim, so it needs to be addressed.

As for leaving office in 2029, I think it's a misreading of the tea leaves. First of all, the president doesn't get to decide whether to leave office. More or less, the military does (which hopefully it will never come to that). But all the military officers I know (not tons but a few) are not in favor of dictatorship. Seems to be part of the coursework at Westpoint or something. But beyond that, Trump is going to pardon himself on day 1, and there's no way that works itself through the courts until after his term ends, and then we're talking probably another two years. So 2031 best care scenario? He'll be 85. Nobody is sending an 85 yo to jail, let alone an 85 yo former president. Hell, he'll probably have clogged his arteries so badly by that point that he'll be fortunate to not be full tits-up. So while I don't look forward to 4 more years of nonsense, I also think that the story will write its own end in a way.

Could be a dissent or could actually be a concurring opinion. I think (stress think) that even Alito wouldn't argue that GOP presidents are above the law completely and totally, but he'll try to argue that in this case it didn't reach the level where immunity is forfeited. They'll whine about free speech or something totally beside the point.

I admittedly stick mostly to big news pubs and whatever filters its way to Hubski. That said, I'm sort of in awe about the narrative around the Trump-Haley cage fight that's going on in the primaries. (Full disclosure, today is Michigan's primary, and I voted for Haley, though I'll vote for Sleepy Joe this fall.) The media narrative continues to be some version of "Look how bad Trump is trouncing her...20 pt loss...what the hell is she still doing in the race?" Whereas my reading of the data are more akin to "holy shit this incumbent is losing 40% of the vote." 40%!. That's a really big number that can't at all be totally explained by people like me (more or less reliable democratic voters) switching sides to vote for her. In my opinion, Trump is operating from a position of extreme weakness, and if it were any other incumbent not garnering 40% of votes, they would have thrown in the towel long ago.

I'm not saying he doesn't have a chance to win in the fall. I made that prognostication back in 2016 to my own dismay. But his chances are slimmer than they were then. He's this unpopular and hasn't had to face a barrage of political advertisements that repeat over and over footage of him saying "fight like hell for your country" superimposed on the Pelosi desk shitters, and "I'll tell Russia to do whatever the hell they want" superimposed on imaged of bombed schools in Ukraine. The ads write themselves at this point, and if there's one thing I'm sure of, Trump will continue to shoot himself in the foot at every opportunity.

Sora is an AI model that can create realistic and imaginative scenes from text instructions.

Not to be a pedant, but by definition it can't create imaginative anything because implicit in that adjective is, well, imagination.

The best part is that embedded in the ask is a plan to invent a consumer grade fusion reactor. I for real can’t determine if this article is a joke.

For sure. It’s like they’re actively trying to make him the new Elon Musk.

keep your eyes on the camera, not everyone else. See if maybe people respond to you better. Yeah, you can't see their expressions, it's a problem. But the way we interact is so fucking dependent on eyelines that Apple has piled billions into moving their fucking cameras down an inch.

It's the idea behind the Errol Morris Interrotron. Obviously not a practical solution for Zoom, but it gets to the idea that we can't really feel what someone is saying if we can't look them in the eye. When looking someone in the eye becomes impossible, then communication breaks entirely, as evidenced by every single internet flame war in history.

The $3,500 Apple device has sold out and appears to be in high demand...

How much you want to bet that by Q3 this year they're not going to be able to give them away? Of course they sell out on day 1, because the fanboys line up. Remember when you had to be invited to buy Google Glass?

As 23andMe found, it's probably less useful that anyone imagines. The number of diseases that are predictable based on one's genome are pretty small. If it weren't so, their stock price wouldn't be pennies at this point. So I think that there's a risk of the data being unprotected, but not specifically from pigs who want to change you 10x for your healthcare.

FWIW 23andMe has my DNA. I did it because I thought it was cool to try to find a long-lost relative. Which I sort of did. And then took no action on. I think my experience is pretty typical of most people who do this. "Cool." [Shrug.] That's not a $6 billion proposition.

Especially when you can't even read an article anymore, I guess, without signing in with Google or FB. No thanks, BI.

- So the MAGA insurgents went "well now our demands are even more unreasonable"

It would appear that the more performative elements in the GOP, of which the MAGA extremists are the majority, really want to prosecute a war that exists purely on the internet. I think giving in to the border demands was Biden essentially calling their bluff. It's a way of flipping the script so that even a lot of the conservative media echo chamber is now screaming about how MAGA is bad for open borders (which is ironic in a way, since The Wall was the only consistent policy position Trump ever even sort of held). Sort of a brilliant move. And it exposes their fecklessness (as if there were any doubt).

But in the end it's still a lesser-of-two-evils type of vote, and Trump is doing exactly nothing to not continue to scare the shit out of everyday voters. His entire campaign is built around stop the steal. It is not an appealing message. I agree with your trepidation about Biden's weakness, but in the end we don't get to compare Biden to our perfect ideal of a candidate on voting day. We compare him to Trump. And to me that's like having the choice between eating hardtack and an actual shit sandwich. Hardtack sucks, but it's nutrition.

Doubtful. It should be pretty easy to test for that.

Could have fooled me into thinking I was reading wsj with that “Contents may settle during shipping” caption. Brilliant.

Well so far despite all the seals that have died, no one has confirmed mammal to mammal transmission, though it seems like a possibility. So it's a 7 for birds, but maybe only a 2 for humans at the moment.

One of the sadder food developments in recent years is that Kroger barely carries ingredients. I don’t go there very often, but every time I do I’m shocked at the amount of prepackaged garbage on the shelves. Like a warehouse sized store that ostensibly seeks food might dedicate about a quarter of its floor space to “ingredients”. It’s maddening. Hence mounjaro and ozempic.