juniperus

That’s wild that you think he isn’t mentally ill. I wouldn’t trust him with a goldfish, you think people lurking the streets shouting insane things like that to people aren’t mentally ill? Are you daft?

It has to do with countries not buying US treasuries. That used to be how the dollar system worked. Now that countries aren’t, tariffs are being used as an alternative. You can read the war finance article series for some background: https://advisoranalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/zoltan...

I’d imagine it was accounted for that these dam surveys are conducted for populations near a river, and they’re just comparing the dam survey of that area to administrative population estimates or whatever. Either way, this data might only be relevant for estimating riverside populations. Also, I’d say it’s more likely population estimates are overestimating the human population by a billion, not underestimating by a billion. That’s just my view of that though

Women go further in school in the west because they are better able to keep track of and incorporate the miscellaneous social dogma one must peddle to advance in the academic world. Men are more “cocky” perhaps being the appropriate word, and are more repulsed by the idea of having to parrot certain things in order to gain social or academic capital. Hence you have literal geniuses working in blue collar jobs, maintaining farms or whatever. This, while high academia has huge amounts of people worried about something called “imposter syndrome” because they actually are imposters. This is part of the etiology of western decline in technology and innovation going back to the 80s and reaching crisis points now.

The main issue is that schools don’t serve nonconformists well, and many geniuses and high IQ people are nonconformist, or simply don’t feel rewarded to have to lie to please social norms that they disagree with. This is generally what leads to the cyclical revolution. At a certain point, the most productive and innovative members of society are disincentivized thoroughly so that the economy collapses, because this occurs alongside the incentivization of compliance and anti-risk behavior which is stagnation.

Those boys who aren’t geniuses, but just disengage from academia because they feel that there is no place for them in society also fuels this crisis because you are left with generations of young men who have no stake in the establishment. The conspiracy alarm in me suggests that the establishment is pushing this outcome by creating a system thoroughly repulsive that mobilizes the prerequisite sentiments for an anti egalitarian revolution in the future because such a system is very profitable (e.g. you can’t invade the third world and plunder their resources under the current regime, but sure can in a more “fascist” regime, and generally fascism is the penultimate phase of a socialist system that needs to coerce sufficient productivity to keep the system going before final collapse/revolution (this cycle has repeated itself countless times in the last 300 years since socialism became the primary organization of people as nations)).

This is the most boomer comment I’ve ever read. On what planet are these any child’s role model? Elie Wiesel? Desmond Tutu? Those are like NPR lifetime achievement award winners, they have no social capital among any generic guy under 18. 0

I keep seeing people point out whether things are legal or illegal.. but my understanding is that the executive branch decides which crimes to prosecute, which makes this point fairly irrelevant save for judicial intervention, which is also tenuous at best when it comes to some of these moves.

The idea that you can have an economically sound career talking about historical colonialism is a bit far-fetched. There are a few authors who probably scrape by a living writing books on this topic, but that's about it (and they don't need a degree to do this). If you get one of the handful of academic jobs where you teach this topic to other students, it is something of a racket, where you are teaching students to get a degree in a field where the only job is teaching other students this topic. There is certainly inherent value in some fields that don't have a direct application, like philosophy, but can still inform other pursuits.

As for the politicization of the field of colonialism studies, generally, these sort of topics are viewed through a pseudo-religious lens today, the religion being utopianism, the idea that there can be survival and satisfaction for all. Under the utopianist worldview, practical concerns are ignored and the topic is judged under a lens of morality and dogma. That makes it an unserious field and marred by activism. Very true for many humanities and social graduate degrees. Might as well go to seminary and spend half a decade learning to be a theologian. The outcome is similar, dogmatic and removed from reality, makes it hard to transfer into a real world setting.

in the case of a humanities PhD, yeah. It's probably easier to become a pro-athlete than find the handful of jobs that require a history PhD. But a chemistry PhD? Engineering PhD... agricultural sciences... geology... the job search is still a search, but these aren't degrees that have no demand. You certainly are more likely to find industry jobs vs. academic jobs with many hard science degrees. The return on taxpayer investment is sensible compared to other taxpayer funded schemes (in my view, if we're going to be a country that also funds primary and high school). and this investment is not a direct funding of PhD students, but funding projects they carry out, which in most cases is in national interest. The select number of students working on completely useless projects that are ideological dogma are definitely making the rest of higher education look useless.

when it comes to scientific research, sometimes a research breakthrough is life or death to people.

in terms of scientific research though, America is ahead of much of Europe. It's historically been easier to get a good job in research in the US. Some research is also harder to carry out in Europe due to regulations. Now, whether the European lifestyle compares to the US is a different story. But when it comes to university-level research, it has been the case that there is just more money to throw toward it in the US, leading to more highly-cited papers. That might be changing, though.

I don't know about that. The benefits are a big reason a lot of people want to be lifelong government employees, it seems.

I think when it comes to "super recognizers," their fusiform face area (FFA) in the temporal cortex of the brain may be better/differently connected. The opposite end of this spectrum is prosopagnosia, where you can't remember any face. There is also prosopometamorphosia, where you perceive faces to be wildly disproportionate and demon-like (google it). So these might not be necessarily correlated with IQ as much as they are related to specific neural pathways/circuitry. Same can be true for visualization of data. There are many autistic savants who can perform specifically remarkable feats, but this isn't really translated perfectly onto the IQ test. The IQ test is probably an imperfect measure of all types of intelligence, but for general intelligence, it provides some level of useful data, but I don't think you can say that data covers all different specific scenarios like those described, sometimes it certainly might. There are probably people who can score 150 on an IQ test, but are actually unable to do any productive creative activity meaningfully.

there are studies showing women actually prefer more masculine men during ovulation, the few days when they can actually get pregnant each month. At other times of the month, they are more attracted to men who are "good providers," which is an evolutionary adaptation that runs counter to monogamy. Essentially suggesting that women, who are mammals that conceal "being in heat" unlike other mammals, can choose to become pregnant with masculine men when they are actually able to get pregnant, but for the rest of the month, they are attracted to the men who they can rely on to provide for them. Birth control might alter this, I'm not sure. But it's an interesting sexual selection rabbit hole to investigate.

I'm all for the concept of a general strike, but I think the general public would be very unsympathetic with a government employee strike. People would be racing to put their name as someone willing to replace a striking government worker.

a general strike is great and all, but didn't Reagan call the bluff with those air traffic controllers and just hire all new ones? Replacing top scientists in all the institutions is basically impossible, but for the most part, a lot of positions would be certainly easy to fill. Park rangers? Forest service employees? lab techs? These are jobs that tons of people with a Bachelor's would be more than happy to fill. Government employees generally want to keep their job for life. So most are more inclined to hide under the covers and try to avoid the spotlight. Though I have seen many get antagonistic and incredulous with recent events but I think it should be clear that people need to keep up. With this recent email sent out saying "reply or you're fired," I mean it's cute some people think they aren't going to reply, but they must do that at their own peril. I'd be replying quick.

I know in my state school, none of the labs expect to be able to take any student, period, at least for now. Some labs have even told students they might need to find a new lab to finish their degree, which I don't know how that works. Right now, the uncertainty is playing a major role. Advisors don't know if their money will evaporate/not be renewed, and are highly doubtful that new grants will roll in. The people running federal labs are saying basically that the expectation is to run a tight ship and do the research that is necessary, but not to expect being able to run wide-ranging projects as they have, that everyone needs to reduce their size and wind down what they're doing to only what is necessary.

I certainly don't think shutting down American research and having a country where there are no new graduate students is a really sane scenario. I think some research is definitely inexplicable when it comes to being taxpayer-funded, and some labs are bloated and can run a tighter ship. But everyone is basically paying the price because of a small minority of labs who are operating as though they aren't receiving taxpayer money, and are conducting research that is truly pointless. Of course those labs exist, but they are a small group of labs... Clearly no one wants to spend the time to look at all the grants and projects individually to find the bloat. The strange part is that doing this sort of mass-culling actually just invigorates many to double-down on what they are doing if it is somewhat politically unsavory right now. So it really isn't achieving much other than recruiting an opposition to republican power, which is probably worth more to prevent than the money that could be saved.

I think it's realistic to assume that the federal government is going to just wholesale cut a lot of the science funding, because compared to other nations, America actually funds a whole lot of science, and from what I can tell, that's much less true in other countries. The effects of that might be a bit abstracted from this event, these cuts might just result in less scientific innovation, which could cost billions of dollars added up over time easily. But, if this is just a sort of shock-and-awe thing, and then money starts becoming available again and the result is that "DEI" practices are expunged from criteria, then maybe the takeaway is just that labs just act with a lot more caution. From what I see, most labs already operate under large amounts of caution because the grant system is tricky enough.

even the company making King's Hawaiian bread probably has a food science PhD, and a materials science PhD, maybe a chemistry PhD, the grain is produced probably with products developed by another chemistry PhD, with a biotech PhD developing the seed, and a crop science PhD running the trials on these altered seeds, treated with pesticides developed by another chemistry PhD working with an entomology PhD sprayed with a machine using programs developed by a CS PhD, on a field monitored by a soil science PhD, then milled on machinery overseen by a mechanical engineering PhD, later using yeast developed by a fermentation science PhD... and maybe there are some math and statistics and economics and marketing PhDs involved somewhere in this. lol

Not that every job in the supply chain requires a PhD, but look at any big company, and it's not like having a PhD in a STEM field is going to hurt your job opportunities for private industry. You just may end up competing for fewer, but better paying jobs.

The situation with humanities PhDs, where you only have an academic position to hope for if you want to use your philosophy PhD or medieval studies PhD or art PhD is a very different situation from someone studying a hard science at the PhD level. Kind of confuses people who only know the infamous situation with humanities PhDs when they realize a STEM PhD can actually lead to a well-paying private industry job.

maybe in CS, but if you have a PhD in a STEM field, you're not going to be looking at a wasteland in private industry for jobs that demand a PhD. Good luck getting a job running a big firm's private research lab without a PhD, and tens of thousands of companies demand that PhD. Chemistry PhD? what company doesn't need one of them, if not dozens. Materials science? yeah, you are going to be finding lots of companies that want their product development team run by someone holding a PhD at least. BioTech and Pharma aren't being run by people who just have a bachelor's, and there are over 10,000 private pharmaceutical research labs. Even your Wonder Bread has more than one food science PhD behind the scenes working on it. Any random big agribusiness alone is going to expect you have a PhD in crop science to conduct trials for pesticide development, and they're going to want a chemistry PhD to help develop the formulation, and an entomology PhD to investigate the effect their product has on insect biology, a soil science PhD to study the effect on soil, biochem PhD, biotech PhD, all sorts of engineering PhDs, probably some statistics/math PhDs...

Now, if your PhD is in the humanities, you're not looking at the same situation. It's almost bizarre they call the degree the same name, since a PhD in the humanities takes you on a completely different path. I don't think many companies are demanding a History or English or German literature PhD. Sometimes this can make you a competitive candidate for a job in a completely unrelated field, but those jobs have no need for a PhD, it's just something that makes you stand out when 100 overqualified people are applying for the same job. So will a candidate working in the Peace Corps. Or volunteering hundreds of hours a year. Those getting a history PhD are competing for the...what, 60? 90? jobs in the entire nation that require a history PhD, which is being a professor that gives other people history PhDs. So of course, you will only get such a job if you go to a top 10 school, and the chances of this are basically less than becoming a professional athlete. So the vast disparity between a humanities PhD which has no sustainable aspirational track, vs. a STEM PhD where you become a qualified candidate for both academia/the government which hires many PhDs, and industry, which also has a demand for PhD-trained candidates. Probably 3/4 of STEM PhDs don't work for a school or the government.

You can't just wander into a PhD program, it's pretty competitive to get into a funded position. You're going to be up against a lot of fresh-faced undergraduates who may already have a publication under their belt. They also have a 3.8+ GPA, are in leadership positions in numerous clubs, have done study abroad and worked 3-4 different research jobs each summer of their undergraduate degree, and probably during the school year too. Thus, they know all the other lab heads (PIs) who could be their advisor, and when funding is available, they're the first ones to know to apply, and they're the most interesting for the advisor because they can be vouched for by other labs as being strong workers, or easy to train, or whatever. If you are just cold applying to labs you have no relationship with, that's harder. If you are just cold applying to a school, and just hoping to get placed in whatever lab has funding, that's even harder, and chances are you can end up working for a tyrant of a PI, which is why they have no students. Some advisors are so bad that people quit their degree, and it ruins them. This, aside from the expectation you work 40+ hours a week, you only get paid for 20 of those hours, usually around $30k/year, and you are bound to research whatever the lab you were lucky enough to get a position in is currently researching. So the next 4 years of your life could be spent on nematode gene editing or formulating lipid nanoparticles or whatever the lab is doing. You're basically never going to be able to just randomly pick a project because it interests you. Though maybe if you're doing a history PhD or something, you do exactly that. But that type of PhD is a deadend where you are competing for like the 75 jobs in the country that expect a history PhD.

All-in-all, it's not really a retirement hobby. If you're really rich and can self-fund your graduate studies, then you can probably go to all types of schools and work in all sorts of labs. A self-funded rich student would be great for most labs. Many schools will accept all types of people, but if you're not getting an acceptance letter with an offer of funding, it's basically like a rejection letter.

I've heard of people in retirement becoming a student for the healthcare benefits some schools offer though. They maintain enough credits to have the right status so they aren't paying a boatload, but can still be on a student healthcare plan that gives great benefits.

Not sure on this, but the type of job you can get in industry differs if you have a Master's or PhD... the difference between being a technician in a lab, and running a research lab, at least in my field. Also somewhat true for federal jobs. There are master's jobs, and PhD jobs.

The fields where you are bound to academia for a reasonable ROI are definitely the humanities, since there is essentially no demand for a history PhD in the private sector, or an English PhD. It can help for job hunting in an unrelated field, I guess. But, a chemistry PhD? or any other applied lab PhD, it's not like you're shooting yourself in the foot by getting an advanced degree in such a field.

Most libertarians considered the Silk Road a place to buy psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms or experimental synthetic drugs (not that these don’t come with numerous risks). Not a bulk heroin warehouse. So the perception is different from that of a wholesale fentanyl clearing house.

The station is on the strip, just a bit south. I think the Tesla tunnel will go there lol.

An 85 and 99 getting the same grade? Genius idea /s