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Relating to OP just a few general themes: - the GOP base has coalesced around nativist and racist themes (great replacement theory). These lines of thoughts are penetrating the GOP with most members now suggesting that racial diversity is a threat to the country (which was steady at around 20% through the years) - this has penetrated the party at large where racist voices were largely delegated to the fringe (to various degrees) but are now carrying significant power in congress - GOP-dominated areas are changing school curricula to make it more difficult to understand the concepts of historic and systemic racism. Essentially the GOP has a concerted effort to revise historic facts and how the next generation is supposed to think about it - In short, there is a concerted ideological re-arrangement in the GOP which in which the racist fringe has been empowered and gleefully throw their weight around.

Recent polling analysis by the Harvard Institute of Politics suggests that Kamala Harris is leading by up to 30% amongst younger voters - especially women. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4953612-harvard-institute-poll-gender-gap-harris-trump/ Amidst reports of half-empty Trump rallies with audience members leaving after just 5 minutes, the inescapable conclusion seems to be that momentum has shifted towards Kamala Harris in the crucial final week before the election on Tuesday. Critics can point to various factors such as the negative optics of Trump’s October 27 event in Madison Square Gardens which was unpleasantly redolent of the infamous ‘German American Bund’ Nazi rally held there in 1939 - complete with racist insults and overt threats of violence towards their ‘enemies’. Subsequent MAGA attempts to exploit the ‘Garbage’ meme backfired spectacularly when Trump appeared like a senile dustman aboard a garbage truck, and his supporters began dressing in garbage sacks - which prompted one prominent conservative influencer and former ally Nick Fuentes to denounce MAGA as a cult. https://www.newsweek.com/nick-fuentes-slams-donald-trump-supporters-it-cult-1979186 But one thing in particular that stands out, was the profound unwisdom of the Trump campaign in allowing some of his most unsavoury affiliates and surrogates to start spitballing in public about what jobs they would take up in a new Trump administration, and which radical agendas they proposed to ‘follow from day one’. There had already been a certain amount of cautious and reasoned speculation about whom Trump might appoint to his cabinet if he wins - e.g. this well researched article in Politico. https://www.politico.com/interactives/2024/potential-cabinets/trump-second-term-cabinet/ All of this however was completely eclipsed by the following garish media events: - Robert Kennedy Jr announcing that he had been promised control of the Public Health Services, and would begin pulling ‘ineffective’ vaccines from the market. --> https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rfk-jr-trump-promised-control-public-health-agencies/story?id=115303649 - Elon Musk announcing that he would be put in charge of a ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ - aka DOGE (*wink-wink*), and start firing staff and tearing down Federal Government, just like he did at Twitter.--> https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/22/tech/elon-musk-government-efficiency/index.html - Aileen Cannon, the Florida district judge being touted by Trump as future Attorney General as a quid pro quo for (temporarily) dismissing the Mar-a-Lago Espionage Act charges against him.--> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-aileen-cannon-attorney-general-b2634284.html As US comedian Joey Adams once said - “With friends like these, who needs enemies ?” You could hardly think of anything more likely to focus the minds of voters on the implications and possible consequences of the choices they will make on Tuesday.

Who should have children? Anyone who wants that responsibility; children tend to make people better versions of themselves. Who should not have children? Mothers whose sons post inane topics on SFn, and whose name has 'FM' in it.

I looked at the Nature paper and one thing that seems to get lost in the conversation is that the study specifically looked at immunocompromised patients with chronic infections. The reason why that is important is because that in those folks infections stick around longer so mutations can arise which could be selected for higher resistance against antivirals. It is not something that is unknown (similar effects have been observed for antibiotic resistances) and it is not a failure of the drug. The second study actually seems to contradict what the article in OP is saying. Again, higher rate in immunosuppressed patients and lower rate of resistance in treated patients without immune issues (but still higher than without treatment). However, rates were low and did not persist. So overall good news, though again, immunocompromised patients remain at higher risk.

Compare and contrast: x + 1/x = 51/2

Who should have children? People who want them, and make the decision to do so. It’s really not anybody else's business whether someone decides to have children or not.

No, it doesn’t. DEI means “consider these candidates, too.” It expands the candidate pool, rather than constricting it. Unless you think organizations with DEI simply do not hire white guys.

I think you should consider a nice herbal or at least decaf. Lol

I seem to recall having this discussion before (though it may have been SCOTUS rather than VP). Can you say with certainty that the statement of intent happened before the choice/shortlist was determined? He announced that four black women were on the shortlist in July 2020 https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/21/politics/joe-biden-four-black-women-vice-president/index.html When did he definitively say it would be a black woman? This belies what DEI actually, and feeds the incorrect GOP narrative, that DEI means choosing a less-qualified minority/woman (because nobody can be as qualified as a white man) rather than the actual mandate of making sure you consider them, since they are often overlooked, and recognizing that diversity has value The GOP people calling her a DEI hire are not using the latter. But was the consideration that maybe a VP that can represent the perspective of more than half of the constituency might have value, and should be one of the criteria to consider? Yeah, I think that’s actually a smart thing to do.

Unfortunately that's on Biden. He literally announced that he intended to choose a black female as running mate. She's more than qualified to run your country as POTUS, certainly far more than Biden or Trump, but she was in fact a DEI choice for VP as a running mate. Not that Burchett should get a pass for firing the gun Biden loaded, but that's politics today. Of course many in the GOP say far worse and have absolutely no excuse.

Force of habit. I ALWAYS do the check longhand just to be sure. (Chem Eng thing)

Sometimes, you are simply in awe of the brutality of the design. Just now on the balcony of my apartment in Abuja, Nigeria. The lit strip is ~3cm wide. I'm told that the bite is 'best avoided'.

Garbage-Force One incoming ! ICYMI - Conservative activist and podcaster Charlie Kirk first posted, then rapidly deleted this video on his X account after discovering it was a complete hoax made by Brent Terhune, a standup comedian who specialises in impersonating southern state MAGA cult members. Watch Brent Terhune on —> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6IzHU849i4

With infinite monkeys a subset infinite number of them would type them out directly with no mistakes. Plenty of time for that...

Well, no, you put it in what you've been told is "evidenced" by authority figures, and only be very specific standards and axioms for "evidence", not what you have actually evidenced yourself. Dreams are "imaginary" but are still real, in the sense that they actually exist. I'm not sure that's a risk worth taking, especially if the consequences exist after death and the only way to "evidence" them would be to return from the dead, or possibly have a near-death experience. There are plenty of cases where the minority overrules the majority, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing. For example, in the Jim Crow era the majority of white people may have wanted the minority of black people to use separate water fountains, something which could be overruled by a minority of justices on the basis of Constitutional law. Well, the majority of people in America believe in God, so what if the majority agreed to ban the teaching of evolution in public schools? Not really. It's just as apt an analogy, and nothing's been given to substantiate why one analogy fits but the other doesn't. "I don't believe in evolution for the same reason that I don't believe in green radioactive mutants who eat people's brains".

Basically, I believe that if all religions disappeared, people would arrive at the conclusion that there is one God. The debate would be over "which one", or rather what the specific characteristics of God are. Even "belief in science" is essentially appealing to a higher cosmic principle than oneself, and fills the void.

When is it ever as simply as a pure definition?

I think it's readily obvious that some people shouldn't have children (e.x. severe cases of child abuse and neglect). Likewise, I think we can agree that society needs some amount of people willing to have children at any given time (e.x. if no one had children, humanity would cease to exist), but obviously that doesn't mean that society needs everyone who is currently having children to be doing so. Regarding "how many children" society needs people having, this is a tricker question. Theoretically humanity could "survive" even if only a small amount of people were having children (just as how humans existed for most of history as hunter-gatherers, and larger populations presumably didn't come about until the advent of agriculture and civilization). How many would be a "good number" therefore would have to be relative to the resources needed to sustain them and provide them with quality of life, however this matter is rather subjective. Just as how some may argue that children are needed to sustain what currently exists, though in reality not everything that currently exists necessarily needs to be sustained, and some things might be better off not being sustained.