TheVat

@J.C.MacSwell So why aren't you also saying he genderized the process more than necessary? Is it okay to appoint on the basis of life experiences as a woman, but it's racializing if the sought-after life experiences are being Black? I still don't see why that's worse than, say, "Catholicizing" the selection of Amy Barrett. (Given the Constitution's stated view on religion and law, I would think Catholicizing would provoke more objections from those taking a stance on a pure process). Barrett was picked for her Catholic moral views on a woman's right to reproductive choices. It wasn't exactly a state secret. Think of all those jurists who think the Constitution protects a woman's reproductive rights and medical privacy who were excluded!

Well, he said the quiet part out loud. I guess he could have said, I will makes choices that promote the greatest possible diversity on the Supreme Court. And given no specifics. But wouldn't that draw the same charges and overheated rhetoric, that somehow diversity appointments are "racializing" the process? In America, race happens to be a strong marker for diversity, so how can it be avoided or shushed when mentioned? This isn't Belgium, where diversity might be found in appointment of both Walloons and Flemings, people who are not visually distinct.

OK, now we're getting somewhere. I think the confusion here is in viewing the individual appointment rather than the whole body of the Court. The goal of appointment is to keep political promises and, for presidents who believe in the genuine virtue of diverse backgrounds, to keep and to further a broad demographic. If the body of the Court is largely white, then that demographic is well covered. Done. And if people who interact heavily with the American legal system, like Blacks (a category that is both an ethnicity and an experience), see someone who looks like them on the highest court, that adds to its credibility as representing the whole nation. Appointing KJB is to assign value to her experience of being Black in America - driving while black, shopping while black, buying housing while black, interacting with law enforcers while black, etc. Appointment simply recognizes being Black as a particular qualifying experience. (See my analogy of the mayor putting a homeless person on a task force to help the homeless - the mayor isn't being "anti-domiciled")

Just for clarity here, why are we calling the unidentified Black woman in Koti's video "Jordan Petersen"? And where is the quote from the pale Canadian guy named Jordan Peterson which apparently promoted Koti to start this thread?? I see no quote or link to him.

And you have the intellectual integrity to acknowledge things you didn't know. A rare quality on online forums. I gather a lot of people didn't know about the South Carolina deal. Even if Biden hadn't made that promise, I am having trouble with the term virtue signaling. If a politician sees a course of action as the virtuous one, isn't it part of being a public figure and providing leadership to promote that course of action and its virtues? This term strikes me as putting a pejorative twist on a positive thing without really revealing any new information. (like Social Justice Warrior)

Plus one, and a belly laugh. Admittedly, I was already chuckling over Sergei's use of the phrase "decisive proof."

I am not sure what the confusion here is. Biden needed South Carolina in the primaries. While campaigning there, he courted the Black vote and promised he would select a Black woman for SCOTUS (per the NON-HIRING process described here half a dozen times, would our Polish member please acquaint themselves with the appointment concept) for the purpose of adding a new demographic to the high court. He wasn't virtue signalling, he was making a political deal in order to gain votes and win a key primary state (which then turned the tide of a race where he had been trailing). It wasn't a sly signal, it was saying the intent with a bullhorn, in advance of taking office so voters would understand what they were getting. Then he won by 7 million votes.

Red hair is more correlated with very low melanin than other shades. Redheads are most prone to melanoma and other kinds of skin cancer (basal cell carcinoma, squamous, etc.) and sunburn very easily. The only way I can see values of attractiveness attached to this would be in cultures where people favor men looking outdoorsy and tanned and thus where more melanin would help to having that look. There was more tolerance for women having pale skin and culturally embedded steps for them to avoid sun - divisions of labor, sun bonnets and other protective hat fashions, parasols, etc. So a redheaded female would fare better, than a male who due to his very pale skin would spend a lot of time looking parboiled and peeling. At higher latitudes, however, this UV tolerance factor could flip over, as redheads can better absorb vitamin D from the weak sunlight and would be less likely to burn or have cancers. Also, redheads have a slightly higher pain tolerance, which might be of more use to men in traditional cultures. Here's a clip from wiki on that interesting link... The unexpected relationship of hair color to pain tolerance appears to exist because redheads have a mutation in a hormone receptor that can apparently respond to at least two types of hormones: the pigmentation-driving melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH), and the pain-relieving endorphins. (Both derive from the same precursor molecule, POMC, and are structurally similar.) Specifically, redheads have a mutated melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene that produces an altered receptor for MSH.[64] Melanocytes, the cells that produce pigment in skin and hair, use the MC1R to recognize and respond to MSH from the anterior pituitary gland. Melanocyte-stimulating hormone normally stimulates melanocytes to make black eumelanin, but if the melanocytes have a mutated receptor, they will make reddish pheomelanin instead. MC1R also occurs in the brain, where it is one of a large set of POMC-related receptors that are apparently involved not only in responding to MSH, but also in responses to endorphins and possibly other POMC-derived hormones.[64] Though the details are not clearly understood, it appears that there is some crosstalk between the POMC hormones; this may explain the link between red hair and pain tolerance.

In any case, choosing race as a criterion for a SCOTUS justice is not racist for the simple reason that race, in this context, is also a particular perspective on American jurisprudence and how it has been differentially applied. Nor would it be sexist to select a woman for her legal perspective on jurisprudence and women. (RBG) Or a conservative Catholic (Alioto, Barrett) for their insights into how devout religion and legal issues can collide. And one of Inow's examples was Scalia, who Reagan favored for his being Italian, yet another ethnic group that experienced legal and social discrimination. It is no different than a city council specifically appointing a homeless person to a task force on reducing homelessness. We don't tear our hair and cry that it's virtue signaling when we understand the common sense reasons driving it. We know there will also be people with comfy homes on the task force, too, and this new appointee is bringing some further balance and unique perspectives.

Didn't you make this error before in another thread, and I and others pointed out that this is not affirmative action because it is an APPOINTED POSITION. No one applies for the position, no one is hired. The president selects and can do so with an intent to create a court panel that is representing a full range of life experiences and broader demographic that is more like that of the country. Or, as in the case of Trump, to curry favor with conservative Christians. If Congress finds the candidate to be not qualified, they can vote to reject. Senators may also try tearing down the candidate while striking political poses for their constituents and vote against confirmation based on partisan slander... yet this seems to provoke no outcry from the high-minded Mr Peterson. How odd.

Perhaps some more indication that sanctions are working: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-business-europe-economy-foreign-debt-572b9a32691739fb6322fba4c301d9f1 BOSTON (AP) — The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century. S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within the 30-day grace period allowed. S&P said in a statement that its decision was based partly on its opinion that sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine “are likely to be further increased in the coming weeks, hampering Russia’s willingness and technical abilities to honor the terms and conditions of its obligations to foreign debtholders.”

Faulty premise, Mack, that passive acceptance of invasion means no lives lost. If Putin expands his empire, you really believe no one will die as a consequence? Hint: look at the nation Putin currently rules.

So now we're down to "hey just check the Internet." The burden of proof for extraordinary claims is on the OP poster. Synaptic connections begin to decay in a few minutes when there is a lack of oxygen. Cellular apoptosis and necrosis ensue soon after. There are Himalayan-scale mountains of evidence for this. When those neural connections (called the "connectome") degrade, all that makes up your self and consciousness go away. One can postulate metaphysical mechanisms by which consciousness continues somewhere else, but that is not science and lies rather in the domain of religion or spiritualism. So, show us a study from a peer-reviewed scientific journal that supports your claims, Keybay. Also, manifesting some basic understanding of cell biology and physiology would help you make your case, whatever that may be. For example, your incomprehension of how freezing leads to ice crystal formation which breaks up cytoskeleta and ruptures cell membranes and breaks up synapses, suggests some sort of further study is needed on your part. When you thaw animal tissue, you get dead meat, not something that thinks and asks for breakfast.

Not 100% certain. I have only my impressions of the company culture of Hallmark, which seems to be rooted in a fairly conservative and "sweet" approach to greeting cards. AFAIK, they do not have a line of naughty cards, but TBH I have not kept careful track of this.

I think the link I posted covers the content of the video, provided your web browser supplies the English translation button at the bottom of the page. Or some have the translation accessed by a dropdown option.

Inadvertent humor from the Hallmark greeting card company....

Shouldn't be that hard to provide a textual source on oligarchs and Putin corruption. I believe a suitable title for such a text would be Putin on the Ritz. https://palace.navalny.com/

Looks like someone watched "Flatliners" one time too many.

Yes. 😀

John Fewster, a country doctor, noticed farmers who had had cowpox seemed immune to smallpox. Though his accounts were largely ignored, Edward Jenner heard them from the physician brothers to whom he was apprenticed (and who had met with Fewster) and years later developed a vaccine with Fewster's observations in mind. Jenner then was credited with the now debunked lovely milkmaid story by a biographer eager to glorify Jenner as a singular genius struck by an epiphany. And there was Albert Hoffman, the chemist working on ergot derivatives and their efficacy for inducing uterine contraction, who found himself tripping one afternoon in his laboratory at Sandoz. The derivative in question was the 25th he had synthesized, hence called LSD-25.

Just want to alert you to someone hacking your account and posting analogies so awful a five year old could see through them. Hope you can fix this breach soon! Good luck!

After Bucha, I'm thinking it's time to stop confiscating oligarch superyachts and start moving them to deep water, drain all engine fluids, and then sink them. If any oligarchs then whine about international law, reply "look who's talking."

I had a recent initiation that was literally gruel-ing, when my wife initiated me into the dark underworld of chocolate malto-meal.

I've been reading The Ministry for the Future, KS Robinson's 2020 novel which draws heavily on the IPCC reports and is really straddling the border between speculative hard sci-fi and well-researched futurism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ministry_for_the_Future There are enough novels being written on this theme that it now has its own genre label: cli-fi (climate fiction). Have gotten about halfway through the book. So rich with problem-solving ideas, hard facts, extrapolations, various anonymous first person narrators who step in to recount their experiences at various locations on the warming globe, etc. that it can be a fairly slow read. Robinson really knows his stuff, and is arguably the world's foremost writer of cli-fi. Just mentioning this as something that can dovetail with the UN summaries, and also counter the "doomism" referred to in the phys.org article in the OP.

Vicks Vapo-Rub is good vapors. So why, if that's the case, wouldn't they be fighting bad vapors? You and your Germ Theory ilk are all sadly blinkered by a stifling orthodoxy. (My autocorrect tried to make that last word orthodontist -- maybe I should have left it that way)