carrionpigeon

6 ms·

1.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
"Witch Trials" I read as more tongue-in-cheek than provocative, given the content of the Harry Potter books. A decent pun, by my standards. I already listened to much of it, but gave up on the 5th episode in frustration. For a pod
2.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
I think the main strength of this activist movement in academia is that it operates through fear. In an environment where much depends on word of mouth and personal reputation, people could lose their entire careers for violating new, rapid
3.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
I, too, am suspicious of this statement. It brings to mind the context of the similar one issued by the University of Chicago a few years ago. While the administration was publicly affirming its commitment to free speech, individual departm
4.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
I removed my original reply upon realization the poster to whom I responded was likely too angry for debate given the tone of the parent post, which I re-read after sending mine. Perhaps the news is too recent and more time is needed for co
5.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
It's still like that in most of the US. And until today, abortion into the 2nd trimester was legal in the entire US, minus some delta in one state as this case reached the Supreme Court. Also, some consideration is needed for lack of a
6.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
This strikes me as wildly implausible. The US broadly has very permissive abortion laws compared to most of Europe, but I have never once heard of anyone migrating to the US over greater abortion access. It's always economic/oppor
7.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
The great (unintentional?) irony of that argument is that before seatbelts, that was arguably how cars used to be manufactured. Back then, drivers were often killed in car crashes by being impaled on the steering wheel. Those in the passeng
8.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
This never occurred to me before. I'm thinking back to my time in high school, when I would see rich 16-year-olds drive up in massive SUVs or trucks. The justification parents had for buying them was that putting their kids in large ca
9.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
The main reason I "[hate] shopping carts" is that the wheels seem to invariably be defective. I remember reading in the late 90s / early 2000s (the era of 'Walmart is taking over' articles) that this was deliberate.
10.
by carrionpigeon 4y ago
Karl Marx, who was residing in Britain at the time, also wrote much on the topic. He had nothing but withering criticism of mainstream/elite British attitudes for the war, namely the downplaying the importance of slavery in the forma
11.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
This is an oversimplification. It started out as: all things being equal, pick the black one. It applied to cases where one was torn between two equal candidates, and the idea was that a nudge toward hiring more blacks would help fix the di
12.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
> claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science. That's taking it way too far. Genotyping populations identifies variation, and in cases where populations that have been reproductively i
13.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
I remember reading about Brazil resorting to head measurements to see if one were one's claimed race and were not cheating to get an advantage. Just a cursory search seems to show the practice is ongoing. https://www.npr.org
14.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
I was curious about how the Indians handle this, too, so I read Republic of Caste by Anand Teltumbde. It's a long, rambling, but detailed description of how the reservation system was playing out in India. Broadly, he argues that any
15.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
Even then, 1 year off is a 20% income reduction on paper. 2 years would be 40%. Want to catch people voluntarily taking off work versus being 'legitimately' unemployed? (For example, is a realtor with no income during the housing
16.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
Our institutions reflect our public discourse, and right now, discourse is dominated by race. When it comes to school admissions, the elite schools and colleges want to see their students in places of influence and power. It helps attract m
17.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
When I was in high school, one student's parents (one doctor and one lawyer --- very financially well-off) took off work for one year just so they could claim having no income on the FAFSA documentation. She got accepted everywhere ,
18.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
I doubt that biographical details about Stalin's erudition and connection to his political actions generalize. It's entirely possible for a well-read dictator to perform quite admirably. Take, for example, Pedro II of Brazil. He w
19.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
This approach is extremely dangerous. It's baffling to me that it could be seriously considered after No Child Left Behind. One key variable that needs to be addressed in evaluating school performance is variation in the quality of the
20.
by carrionpigeon 5y ago
I cannot help being underwhelmed by papers on the so-called 'microbiome.' Very seldom is it something more complex than proportion/prevalence of species X correlates with behavior/health outcome Y. Simple correlations wi