CharonY

Which level of classes are you teaching?

Somewhat related to the topic of the thread, the choice of VP as well as the general direction the Dems are going are to (slightly) break what has been perceived as traditional values (including implicit and explicit sexism). Especially since the Rep have such a strong grip as noted in the quote, it would be probably a losing proposition for the Dems to do the same. There used to be certain aspects where both, Dems and Reps tried to score points on, including being tough on crime or illegal immigration. But that seems to be more polarized now than it was before.

Well, here is the thing, I think both campaigns have stopped trying to pivot to the middle and trying to grab the probably not so relevant middleground anymore. Trump in his previous campaign already did that and Biden's campaign if anything seems to pivot to the left at the moment, with the possible exception of choosing Harris. Both campaigns seem to focus to make sure that their base is going to vote, and looking at who actually goes to the voting booth, it may actually be a good strategy. Within this situation fueling potential sexist resentments probably is not a good idea, as it is unlikely to get votes, but can alienate potential Biden voters. Especially with his reputation of being creepy around women.

It is more a question of not stumbling rather than jumping. But then you have a surprising number of folks with MAGA hats and confederate flags in some areas.

I think it is a very good model and evidence suggest that, too. Some of the issues is that the departments and their leadership are too entrenched into their ways and often trying to change it is difficult to impossible. Also trying to change a mindset of folks who are used to an adversarial mindset to do proper community policing is also somewhat unlikely. Studies suggest that one of the impediment is resisting police culture. Sometimes it is necessary to change the whole thing and often the change has to come from the outside.

Well, it kind of makes sense, especially as Harris die land some blows at Biden during the debates.

! Moderator Note Moved to speculations. However, the OP explains basically nothing, so I request a summary of what is meant, or it will be closed for being nonsense.

What INow said. Polls of likely/registered voters actually are slightly more in favour (~42%)

That mostly speaks to political apathy in the US population, though. If you look at approval ratings, polls show that around 40% of Americans look at the current state of affairs and thing that it is just fine.

No, you are reading too much into semantics. You could instead they they were designed as such. Which means that their internal mechanisms reflect their purpose. It is not that the police works in an innocent vacuum and are only doing someones bidding. And I think this is where the our differences in view appear. You seem to think of the police force as something is something reactive, and if things go wrong it is due to failures of a few individuals on either side of the matter. This view does not acknowledge systemic issues within the system were a combination of police, lawmakers and of course big swathes of the populations itself have created a system where deadly force by the police and especially against certain groups (outcasts of society, poor folks, and minorities) are kind of accepted targets. Again, while in other countries the police may not be perfect and have other issues, they lack certain elements that are apparently part of the North American system, which leads to rather dramatic differences in outcome. Or in short, the difference between systemic issues of the system vs individual responsibility. I should probably add that in recent times there are police agencies actively trying to change, including changing accountability rules. The Camden police department was one of the models where the whole department was disbanded, due to corruption, accusations of police planting evidence, and a deluge of complaints. At the same time Camden saw huge crime rates. Crimes went uderreported as the the black residents were afraid of the police. After disbanding the whole police force and building it from the ground up and starting a community-oriented policing, crime rates dropped, they hired more black officers (as Camden was a mostly black community) and so on. So here a radical rebuild was an effective measure to root out the system that has been set up in the former Camden police force.

Here is the thing, you have to wonder why. And the reason as has pointed out is that historically the police has been used to subjugate certain groups. It is small wonder that these groups do not accept them as valid authorities. It is not a problem just now. It is only that now finally white folks are also starting to understand the issue on a broader scale than it used to be. You cannot just look at the point of impact and decide whether the process works. You have to look at the whole mechanism and figure out why the observed impact happened in the first place. Because if you don't all you are going to conclude is that the plane was too fast and the ground too solid.

Perhaps, but not for market. It is special approval track (from what I understand) for emergency military use with a time limitation.

Actually basically all are going through the phases (but accelerated) and at least AFAIK I have not seen anyone beside Russia registering a vaccine before phase 3 data have been published. In fact, even the Phase 1 and 2 data has not been published, which is especially worrying as they did a combined Phase 1 and 2 trial with only 38 volunteers. That is roughly the scope of Phase 1 from virtually all other developers. They now have declared that they want to start Phase 3, but again with much fewer folks than the other trials. As a whole, I would not put a lot of money into this particular vaccine (after all, they manufacturer apparently did not, either).

Boosters are required for quite a range of vaccines, too. The main question that we cannot answer to date is how much protection the observed immune responses really deliver.

The user is banned but I would just like to add that reduction of antibodies does not necessarily mean that a loss of immunity. Also, vaccines can be designed to elicit stronger immune responses. At this point, however, we do not know enough to make certain predictions.

That is a salient question. Too often it is pointed out that someone did something that prompted to police to a presumably justified shooting. However, especially as someone who grew up with a different type police, I have to wonder what are the steps leading up to the fatal interaction, and why does it not happen that often in most European countries? Why is an interaction with a drunk and belligerent more likely to end in death in the US (or Canada, for that matter). One part could be police training, but is it really all? I found it befuddling when talking to my US colleagues and friends that they think that if you do not immediately follow police orders or if you startle them somehow, you risk being shot. And again, for someone growing up elsewhere this is just mind boggling.

I am not entirely sure if it is really helpful, as most biological materials stored in a solvent will basically just look like the solvent (with a number of exceptions, I am sure, especially if they can be dyed). However, most are not stable for very long at room temperature and especially if some follow-up is intended they generally need to be froze. Some are amenable to freeze drying, but phospholipids tend to degrade during that process. But then it is not that you would be able to tell by looking at the sample.

It think the basic issue for the lengthy argument that leads nowhere is that the assumption being made (more police interactions automatically lead to more negative interactions) fails to address the second dimension of the quality of interactions. If you reduce the likelihood of a negative outcome per interaction, you can obviously increase the number of interactions without also increasing the number of negative interactions. A simple example is looking at other countries where police shootings are extraordinary rare events. They reduce their issues not by having a smaller police force (in fact in many cases they are on average larger than the US) but by having a different system of policing. I suspect if that is not being acknowledged, we will go another round of identical arguments for a couple more pages.

This is not exclusively matter of number of police, but type of policing. What you describe is typically known community policing. Unfortunately especially large police forces tend to forego it in favour of hard responses (certain narcotics and anti-gang groups are notorious for that). That being said, it is true that effective community policing often requires more manpower. But again, the important bit is to change the approach. In fact, studies have shown that increase in police force has to be balanced with policies. In areas where e.g. things like stop and frisk events increased due to increased police presence, there was no benefit in terms of crime reduction, but there was an increase in complaints and violent incidents. So having more force on the beat and building community connections is indeed a good way to reduce crime as well as complaints, but it has to be part of a larger package. In other words, it would make sense to defund the areas dedicated to the most aggressive measures (say, military equipment, heavily armed plainsclothes units and so on) in favour of hiring folks that get to know the folks that they are policing.

One of the rhymes I see is what is nowadays sometimes called "Identity politics". It builds a view of a us versus them and it is astonishingly successful in pushing otherwise unsavory folks to power. What has changed are the tactics and delivery methods (especially with the internet). But we still see very similar slogans used by those autocrats. It is always simple answers to big questions and almost quick to find someone to blame. In the Weimar Republic it was the communists and globalists (i.e. Jews) that threatened somehow the better days of Germany (which did not really existed for that long in the first place). Goebbels drew a picture of a country in peril from the inside and the outside and emphasized autarky and disconnection with the rest of the world. "Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall", he said. Within these walls there then will be a distinction between those that are loyal and thus worthy and the others. By making folks fighting them, they galvanize their base against a common enemy and obfuscate their own actions. At some point, it will become "the will of the people", which includes erosion of rights and descent into authoritarianism. It worked then, it works now.

That is silly. Everyone knows that once the drawer is full, something inside will just jam it shut forever. I had to move twice to regain drawer space. With regard to OP, am not a medical doctor, but you might want to search the literature for congenital thumb anomalies and check if something fits the bill (or bring it up with your medical provider).

There are a range of jobs that are often posted under titles such as data analyst, data scientist, data engineer and so on. They tend to represent different stages of the analysis process or different types of data and may require different levels of qualifications. Currently, data scientist is the top flavour in the realm of big data. Learning demonstrable skills such as R and python as well as some machine or deep learning methodologies can be a big advantage. In many cases the private sector wants to see a graduate level education but it depends on the level of the job. They often are fine with either statistics or computer science backgrounds, as long as you can demonstrate e.g. experience in the models they are interested in. With regard to job search, a big asset is demonstrating experience outside the class-room. So summer internship could be useful, but assisting in a research project (under a prof) using such skills would also work. The latter has the advantage that it might also help in finding a graduate position, if that is the desired path.

The reporting system is to me a stronger indicator of organized central responses are going to be. There are countries with similar challenges (though being way smaller) which have been more successful than others. In most cases a strong coordinated response was the reason. Case in point, we got a rich, well-educated country high standard of living and much fewer issues with sanitation. But the response was half-hearted, to say the least.

Most likely. In a country of that size implementing effective containment is difficult. However, surprisingly China had a decent success to keep it contained, (even if they do underreport). But I do not understand the Indian system well enough to comment. The little what I heard is that their reporting system is mostly inadequate, which does not bode well.

Here is an interesting paper examining responses to COVId-19. It focuses on Europe but it highlights how important coordinated efforts are: