Yup -- projection, plain & simple
1,306 karma · joined June 18, 2017
> When democratically elected systems transform into totalitarian regimes, the transition is subtle, stepwise, and involves a combination of pre-planned as well as serendipitous events. Indeed, this was the case with Germany in the years 1929-1939, where Hitler was given a chance at governing, the president subsequently died, a key general resigned after a scandal and the pathway to the Fuhrer was inevitable.
It's a mask & a vaccine, not the beginning of the Third Reich. The fact that your sources can't see the two as different things (and not as part of some slippery slope), tells me they've already arrived at a conclusion and will ignore all contrary evidence.
I know masks & vaccines feel oppressive -- but facts simply do not concern themselves with your feelings. There is a world of difference between the Third Reich and public health measures to slow the tide of preventable deaths. To be honest, I can't believe I'm having this debate here.
Would you chill out? People are disagreeing with you & presenting evidence, not burning you at stake. When did everyone get so damn fragile??
> For example, we had a travel ban with China in March 2020, only to be infiltrated with a European strain.
Isn't this a good sign that the travel ban actually worked -- i.e. created enough of a delay in the spread of covid to result in a meaningfully different pandemic than we would have otherwise experienced?
> "If there is a significant deterioration in security -- that could well happen, we've discussed this before -- I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday."
> Many of the students in my class who didn’t turn their degrees into industry success were insanely talented, but Columbia traded on its reputation to sell them big dreams that it could never deliver.
> During my 2nd year I suspected that the school wasn’t providing a launching pad to a career — most of the instructors were struggling to establish a career themselves & many weren’t even much more experienced than their students. A 4th yr student taught our cinematography class.
> The brass ring the program dangled was that your film could be chosen for the annual festival where, in theory, big-time agents would see it and maybe sign you. But it was cutthroat to even be selected for the festival. And tuition didn’t cover the cost to make those films.
…
> I slowly begin to realize this IS the deal. He made it pretty clear if I wanted my degree, I needed to help him sell his tv pilot. Yep, the Chair of Columbia’s prestigious graduate film program tried to shake me down in order to jump-start his own stalled out career.
The full thread is here: https://twitter.com/jstoteraux/status/1413326562821246978?s=....
Students definitely deserve some blame for signing onto these expensive programs without doing any meaningful research. But university admins can be corrupt, too, and it’s likely that they used their reputation as “Columbia” to sell students something they knew was fake.
Anyway, in response to the original point — I don’t think that’s a good example of entitlement since “scam” is a more appropriate word. I think they had stuff like “people being mean to waiters and flight attendants” in mind, which is a different sort of entitlement.
> Globally, an estimated 741 300 (95% UI 558 500–951 200), or 4.1% (3.1–5.3), of all new cases of cancer in 2020 were attributable to alcohol consumption. Males accounted for 568 700 (76.7%; 95% UI 422 500–731 100) of total alcohol-attributable cancer cases, and cancers of the oesophagus (189 700 cases [110 900–274 600]), liver (154 700 cases [43 700–281 500]), and breast (98 300 cases [68 200–130 500]) contributed the most cases.
So ~4 out of 100 cancer cases can be attributed to alcohol consumption. I'm not sure if that's a _ton_ or how to contextualize it, but that seems like the more appropriate framing.
> The FTC is apparently unwilling to allege that Facebook has ever (pre- or post-Instagram acquisition) had something like 85% or even 75% market share; instead it hedges by offering only that the number is somewhere north of 60%. The question naturally arises: which firms make up the remaining 30–40%? Although Plaintiff is correct that it is not required to identify every alleged competitor in its pleadings, its choice to identify essentially none is striking.
> The Court’s decision here does not rest on some pleading technicality or arcane feature of antitrust law. Rather, the existence of market power is at the heart of any monopolization claim. As the Supreme Court explained in Twombly, itself an antitrust case, “[A]district court must retain the power to insist upon some specificity in pleading before allowing a potentially massive factual controversy to proceed.” Here, this Court must exercise that power. The FTC’s Complaint says almost nothing concrete on the key question of how much power Facebook actually had, and still has, in a properly defined antitrust product market. It is almost as if the agency expects the Court to simply nod to the conventional wisdom that Facebook is a monopolist.
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPu...
That's empirical evidence of a tight labor market that's difficult to fake. Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? Even if employers lie (they do), the salary numbers from BLS are separate from that.
Of course, there are always people who slip through the cracks unfortunately. But avoiding anecdotes and looking purely at the numbers, it's difficult to find a labor market in the USA that's tighter than the one for software engineers.
The full quote from Sorkin's segment, ~40 seconds into the video: "Melvin Capital is now out of the stock. They got out of the stock, from what I understand, yesterday afternoon." (https://twitter.com/cnbc/status/1354406938319216640). It could not be more clear -- "from what I understand" refers to the precise timing and not the overall fact.
> The claim that Melvin closed their position is something of a game of "telephone" in that it was a CNBC anchor that claimed that "from what I understand" Melvin Capital is out of the stock, after he talked to the CEO (off camera).
That's not a game of telephone, that's quoting a direct source. Sorkin talked to the CEO of Melvin Capital right before he went on air and then immediately reported it.
> just a journalist claiming a source said something
And it's not "some CNBC anchor," it's a well known journalist (Andrew Ross Sorkin) with a reputation at stake.
> All of the other stories about the claim simply state "according to CNBC".
Because CNBC got the scoop. It's journalistic etiquette!
> no recording of the conversation, just a journalist claiming a source said something
Every single article published in any newspaper ever is a journalist claiming a source said something.
> Melvin themselves have not (as far as I can see) issued any kind of statement, written or otherwise, that clearly states they have zero position on GME any more.
The CEO of Melvin Capital calling a prominent CNBC journalist counts as a statement, if you're willing to put aside your rabid paranoia for a few minutes and think critically instead of conspiratorially.
This is paper thin logic. If they hadn’t said anything publicly, you and others would be commenting, “See! Melvin Capital hasn’t said anything, so they’re still shorting GME.” It is incredibly common for investors involved in public battles over a stock to announce they’ve closed a position, see Bill Ackman and Herbalife (https://www.investopedia.com/news/billionaire-bill-ackman-du...)
Because a lot of people who hear that take it as literal encouragement. The events of Jan 6 are one example of how threats like that aren't simply rhetorical devices.
Parler is owned by the Mercer family, of Renaissance Technologies fame, one of the most successful hedge funds in existence. They are personally worth tens of billions of dollars.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did...
You deserved it."
> Wow, the company created, funded, and used exclusively by Facebook re-affirms Facebook's decision to do something?
> Truly shocking
i.e. someone blindly adding to the anti-tech dogpile without even bothering to click on the article and, you know, read it, I'd hold off on any diatribes about how SV is a monoculture. The anti-SV crowd seems to be afflicted by a similar rabid tribalism that makes nuanced discussion very difficult.
Given that a common conspiracy theory espoused on Parler is (was) that vaccines contained tracking microchips (?), I imagine Parler users expected at least some anonymity.